


Hesitate

by pearly_rose



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon - Book, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post-Canon, Romance, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, The Quiet Isle, platonic bedsharing...or is it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-07 09:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21455764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearly_rose/pseuds/pearly_rose
Summary: He had never known her to be an adept liar. Too righteous, too…good. Right now, she wears her guilt like a shroud. It’s written all over her, in how stiffly she holds her shoulders, in the way she won’t quite look him in the eye. Still he follows her into the Riverlands without question, with the same swirling intensity in his stomach as when he galloped back to Harrenhal to save her from the bear pit.orJaime and Brienne face Lady Stoneheart and must figure out how to live with the consequences.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 335
Kudos: 487





	1. Jaime I

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fic in 6 years, and I've never written for this fandom. I've also definitely never written a multi-chapter fic, but this started with an idea for one scene and kept growing and growing so now here I am, with 12 chapters for my otp.
> 
> I'll be updating with a new chapter every week. As music is also a big part of my writing process, I'll be updating [this Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=B2fEDWiORdiGAypuf64Xcw) with each new chapter as well, if you care to listen. This chapter's song is where I took this fic's title from, "Hesitate" by Golden Vessel.

  
  
Thank you to [Ro_Nordmann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro_Nordmann) for the beautiful banner!   


He had never known her to be an adept liar. Too righteous, too…_good_. Right now, she wears her guilt like a shroud. It’s written all over her, in how stiffly she holds her shoulders, in the way she won’t quite look him in the eye. Still he follows her into the Riverlands without question, with the same swirling intensity in his stomach as when he galloped back to Harrenhal to save her from the bear pit. His skin is singing in anticipation of what awaits them. _Finally, something to do that doesn’t involve bloody politics, _he thinks._ Something honorable._

They gallop away from Pennytree in the pre-dawn light, horse hooves pounding over a fresh dusting of snow. She doesn’t speak, just drives her horse forward, and it’s with some surprise he thinks that he might follow this sullen woman anywhere.

The sky gradually fades from a deep navy to a soft pink, the rising sun reaching fingers of light across the forest floor and setting the snow to sparkling in the glare. In the growing light of dawn he’s unable to ignore the stiff way she’s held her sword arm in her lap this whole time, clutching the reigns one-handed in her left. He thinks he can see the faint shape of a splint around her forearm under her sleeve. He catches sight of the bandage on her cheek once more and the soaring in his stomach turns to something clenching. Leaden.

“My lady, tell me how you came by this bite,” he calls to her, finally breaking the silence.

She bristles, shaking limp hair loose from behind her ear to hide the wound. He sees her swallow heavily, pale eyelashes fluttering closed for a moment before she shifts her mount to a slower pace. He falls in beside her, waiting.

“I am healing,” she answers stiffly.

“That’s not what I asked.”

She is quiet for a moment, hesitant. “It was Biter,” she says softly, and he sucks air in sharply between his teeth. He had assumed it was an animal bite but this, this was unconscionable. She chances a glance towards him before fixing her eyes at a point on her mare’s neck. “I had the misfortune of coming across the remnants of the Bloody Mummers at the Inn at the Crossroads.”

He does not know what to say in response as guilt prickles through him. He had sent her off to fulfill _their_ quest with Oathkeeper in hand, alone, knowing she was capable. More capable than him. But he had not imagined such danger would find her. In hindsight it had been uncharacteristically optimistic of him.

“Rorge attacked first but I killed him,” she continues, voice rising as she gains confidence.

“There’s a good wench,” he smiles grimly, remembering her screams when Rorge, Shagwell, and Zollo dragged her off, before he shouted a lie to stop them.

“Then Biter overpowered me. He broke my arm,” she raises the splinted arm from her lap gingerly. “Then he…then he bit me,” pain mottles her voice. “He _chewed_ me.”

He clears his throat to hide the depth of his concern. “And you killed him as well, I hope?”

She shakes her head sadly. “No, he would have killed me. He _was_ killing me. It was a boy who ended him, a smith. He saved me.”

Jaime frowns. “Brienne…” he says gently, his voice dropping to a murmur. She stiffens once more, glances at him, steel sparkling in her eyes.

“I killed Timeon, Shagwell, and Pyg before that, at the Whispers.”

“You killed the Goat as well, did you know? His ear festered.”

A faint smile quirks her large lips. “I had heard.”

“I saw his rotting head at Harrenhal, not long ago,” he paused for a moment, thoughtful. “You once told me to stay alive, so I could have my revenge. It seems you have been carrying it out in my stead, Brienne.”

“It was my revenge, too.” She finally looks him in the eye at that and he holds her gaze.

_Yes,_ he thinks, _they hurt you too_.

She pulls on the reins, bringing her horse to an abrupt stop. “Ser Jaime, I have not been fully truthful with you about where we are going.”

He sighs, bringing his own horse to a stop as well. Cersei’s words ring in his ears. _You great golden fool. He’s lied to you a thousand times, and so have I_.

_But Cersei never confessed her lies to me,_ he thinks.

“The smith who saved me was a member of The Brotherhood Without Banners. I was delirious, fevered from my injuries. They captured me, my squire, and our traveling companion. It is the Brotherhood I’m leading you to, not Sansa Stark.” She speaks quickly, the words tumbling from her mouth.

“And why would you take me to them?” He cannot help the anger and surprise that prickle through his tone. “They brought me before Lady Stoneheart,” she looks more scared than he’s ever seen her as she says it, causing his anger to subside slightly. “She made me choose, the sword or the noose.”

“Seeing as you’re very much alive, I take it you chose the sword?”

She answers, barely a whisper, “I did.”

He wants to stay angry. Furious, even. And part of him is, to be sure. But she looks so…_broken_. It was disconcerting to see his stubborn, valorous wench so defeated. She speaks again, before he can disentangle his thoughts.

“They were hanging Pod and Ser Hyle too, I could not let them die because of me. She gave me a choice, but it was an impossible choice.”

Despite the seriousness of what she had just said, jealousy prickles at him. _She’s been traveling with men?_ He shakes the thought from his mind. “You do not have it in you to be convincingly deceitful, wench, I could tell even at Pennytree something was amiss. I would like to think we moved beyond your wanting to kill me quite some time ago, though perhaps I’ve give myself too much credit?”

“Truly I did not think you would even come with me. But I will not let harm come to you, Ser Jaime.”

“But you would lead me to my death.”

She looks stricken. “Lady Stoneheart wants your head, but I have a plan.”

Still he wants to scoff at her, argue with her, curse her for lying. But then he recalls their first day together, sailing down the Trident, what feels like a lifetime ago. Brienne’s split-second decision to scale a cliff face and launch a great bloody _boulder_ onto Ryger’s ship to ensure their escape.

“Well, if it’s all the same to you I’ve become rather attached to my head.”

“I never wished to deceive you, only I could think of no other way.”

“It was surprising, even to me, how quickly I agreed to follow you.” Truthfully he had leapt at the chance, which was odd considering the last time he and the wench went traipsing through the Riverlands he lost a hand.

“Why did you?”

“You save me and I save you, it seems to be what we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You great golden fool. He’s lied to you a thousand times, and so have I.” ASoS Jaime VIII


	2. Brienne I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She found that being near him again was like looking directly into the sun. It left her disoriented and blinking, unsure of herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, this fic is going to swap POVs between Jaime and Brienne by chapter. Also, this is un-beta'd so all grammar mistakes are my own. I love commas.
> 
> [The companion playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=hpsLZ1LUQ3ewXEOH-TwUPA) has been updated as well. Songs for this chapter are "Are You With Me?" by Stars, and a cover of "I Would Die 4 U" by Rose Cousins, Bear's Den, and Christof van der Ven.

They’ve stopped beside a stream and Brienne can feel his eyes on her while she waters the horses. They’ll camp here for the rest of the day, riding the rest of the way to the Brotherhood to meet their fate once night falls. She absentmindedly strokes her mare’s neck, thinking of the impossibility before them. It’s unlikely to go off without a hitch, but she won’t be able to save Pod and Hyle without Jaime’s help. She had expected him to insult her when she told him, as he usually did, but he was surprisingly gentle with her. For the life of her, she can’t understand why he hasn’t turned tail and gone back to his army, abandoning her to Stoneheart’s noose. _“You save me and I save you,”_ he had said when she pressed him.

_I want to keep him safe_, she thinks, and has to laugh at the absurdness of it. She, a girl playing at a knight, wants to protect the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. He, who has an army and the power of the crown at his back. She doesn’t know how, given the circumstances of their acquaintance, she has grown to care for him in the way she does. It makes her feel foolish.

Of course now she understands why she was ready to hang rather than hurt him, the realization rippling through her like forks of lightning when she first saw him again at Pennytree. She hadn’t known what she was going to say when she found him. But suddenly there he was, solid and real and gleaming before her. When he stood in greeting warmth spread through her limbs, a strange calmness washing over her. _I have missed him_, she thought. Once, the idea would have alarmed her. No longer.

She found that being near him again was like looking directly into the sun. It left her disoriented and blinking, unsure of herself. She does not want to give what she’s been feeling towards him a name, to make it real. Her emotions are still tangled up inside her, and she’s been determinedly avoiding introspection for the time being. First, they must rescue Pod and, she supposes, Ser Hyle. First, they must survive. So she blurted out a lie, but of course he saw through her. He knows her too well.

The day had grown warmer, the midday sun beating down to melt the fresh snow. She wonders if this will be the last day she ever feels the sun on her face. She closes her eyes to it, feeling the warmth on her eyelids. She thinks of Tarth, the way the sunlight winks off the ocean on a bright day. She can almost smell the salt in the air of Shipbreaker Bay, hear the waves crashing against the cliffs below Evenfall Hall. Hears her father’s booming laugh, a rare thing, though the sound of it would fill her up and put her at ease.

She had dressed warmly for the cool of the winter morning, but now the extra layers were making her feel overwarm. Absentmindedly she loosens the top of her jerkin.

“_What is that on your throat_,” Jaime practically hisses from his position near the fire.

She freezes, a hand still on the laces. “It’s nothing, a bruise,” she lies. She’s avoiding his eyes and tries to cover back up even as he’s striding over.

In the space of a breath he’s pushing her hand aside with his golden one, using his good hand to fold back the cloth at her neck. He’s so close she can feel his breath on her face. His thumb brushes the purpling bruise the noose left behind, where is bites across her throat. She shivers involuntarily at the touch, hoping he takes it for pain.

He looks up, disbelieving eyes searching her own. “Brienne, when you told me you chose the sword you did not tell me that you had _first chosen the noose_.”

“It does not matter,” she edges out of his grasp, feeling the heat of a blush spread up her neck.

“You would die for me?” He sounds incredulous, though there is something else she can’t quite place in his voice.

“I swore an oath,” she says simply. “But I was craven. They were hanging Pod and Ser Hyle too, and Pod is just a boy…” In a rush of memory she feels the scratch of the rope tightening around her neck, her dangling feet searching for purchase, Pod kicking frantically nearby, the clear blue of the sky, barely managing to shout “sword” while she still had air to do so.

“You and I swore the same oath, to find and protect the Stark girls. You did not swear to give your life for _mine_. I would not have allowed it.”

“You don’t understand,” and she can feel the tears threatening to fall. _Don’t cry, a knight wouldn’t cry_. “Lady Stoneheart…she _is Lady Catelyn_. The Brotherhood found her corpse and Lord Beric gave it the kiss of life and so she lives once more.”

“My lady, you must be feverish from your wounds,” he presses his hand against her forehead and the concern in his touch is almost more than she can bear.

“My fever has passed, I am telling it true. Lady Catelyn lives. If I had not seen it myself I would not believe it, either,” she concedes. “She leads the Brotherhood with her desire for revenge against all Freys and Lannisters.”

He seems skeptical, but acquiesces. He had believed her about the shadow, about Renly, he would believe her about this. “If this is so, you were her sworn sword, why would she want you dead?”

“She is…changed, fueled only by vengeance. She saw Oathkeeper, my letter from the King, and they say…they say I called for you, in my fever. They call me ‘Kingslayer’s Whore’ and will not listen to reason.” She can feel herself blushing deeper at the admission, but she would not keep any more secrets from him.

He pauses for a moment. “I am not worth this trouble. Why not just knock me over the head and hand me over?”

She doesn’t know how to answer him. “You are a good man, Ser Jaime. I will not let harm come to you, not again.” She is thinking once more of the Bloody Mummers, of his sword hand.

There is something indescribable in his face…wonder, maybe? But no, why would he look at her with wonder? He says nothing for a long while, simply blinking at her, still unnervingly close.

Then, “When was the last time you changed that bandage?”

The sudden change of subject startles her. She has not seen herself since the bite, but can imagine how she looks, uglier than ever. Not that the looking glass had ever been kind before. _Now I am the ugliest woman in Westeros for certain_, she thinks, _and his sister the most beautiful_. “What does it matter?”

“You’d be a right sight uglier with gangrene, for one,” he sighs. “Let me, I have some things in my bag…” he trails off turning to his horse to rummage through one of the saddle bags, eventually producing clean linen. “Put some of that wine on the fire to boil.”

She wordlessly obeys, sitting beside the fire to wait for him. He’s surprisingly gentle when he removes the bandage, sighing when the damage is finally revealed.

“This will be a fearsome scar,” he tells her, only half-jokingly. “Your enemies will quake, knowing you survived such a battle.”

“Do not mock me, ser. They will laugh at me, as they always do,” she scoffs.

“And how many of them have you beaten?”

She cannot stop her mouth from quirking into a small smile. _Jaime knows I am capable_, she thinks. _Which is more than most men have thought_.

“This will sting,” he says softly, before pressing a wine-soaked cloth to her ravaged cheek.

She clenches her jaw under his hand, though the pain is not so bad. Truth be told, she is more distracted by his touch to pay much attention to anything else. His arm with the golden hand is draped across her shoulders, to better steady the work of his left. No man has ever touched her thus, and so casually, though he does not seem to think much of it. _He must think me more fellow solider than woman, anyhow_. She tries not to be disappointed at the thought—after all, his respect for her as a fighter was more than she got from most men. It would suffice.

He finishes tying off the new bandage below her ear, then moves away from her, clearing his throat. “It seems to be healing as well as one could hope,” he offers.

_It must be hideous, he can’t even look at me now_, she observes while he busies himself returning supplies to his bag.

“Thank you, Ser Jaime.”

He shrugs. “It’s nothing you haven’t done for me.”

She remembers cleaning the sick out of his beard on their way to Harrenhal and trying to keep his festering stump clean, even as the infection took hold.

They eat in silence, which unnerves her. When they had first met and he had been her prisoner, she could hardly get him to shut up. More confusingly, when he had spoken today he hardly teased her once. The arrogance she has grown so accustomed to since Riverrun is gone, and she’s not quite sure what to do with what has replaced it. But there’s a strange intensity behind his eyes every time he catches hers, and it makes her chest tighten with longing. Something has shifted between them.

There is a feeling blossoming inside her, swelling up to fill her to the brim. And so she does give it a name, and calls it love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone for the kudos and kind comments on the first chapter. I was super nervous about posting this so the encouragement has been a boon!


	3. Jaime II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three lives for his one seems a fair trade even if he won’t tell her so, and if he didn’t let her die back in the bear pit he bloody well wasn’t going to let her die now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter are "Emotion" by Hazy Eyes and Panama, and "Shrike" by Hozier. You can find everything together in [this handy playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=_KumEChXSzWHWfZ96aTViw).

With dusk still settling across the forest they set out for the Brotherhood. Brienne had said it would only be a few hours ride, and he agreed it would be best to approach under cover of night. Before setting off he removes his armor and lashes the bundles to her horse. He feels almost naked without his mail, knowing they will be outnumbered in the fight that surely awaits them. 

It would be difficult, but they had agreed she would not be able to ensure Podrick and Hunt’s safety without first presenting Jaime to Lady Stoneheart. Brienne thinks she can save him, too, but he knows his sins are catching up with him. Three lives for his one seems a fair trade even if he won’t tell her so, and if he didn’t let her die back in the bear pit he bloody well wasn’t going to let her die now. 

“If we’re to play our roles, I may have to be cruel to you.”

“Oh, I think you can manage that,” she almost smiles, working to bind his arms loosely to his waist. 

“It has to look like you mean it,” he says, and so she sighs and tightens them.

As their horses pick their way slowly through the dark, he shifts uncomfortably at the memory of changing her dressing. His breath had quickened, to be quite so close to her. He tried very hard to focus on the work at hand, but found himself distracted by the sparkle in her eyes when his comments drew a hint of a smile from her. Had he ever seen her smile before? He had found himself staring at her too-large lips in a way that made his stomach flip, made his heart pound traitorously, though he could not say why.

He didn’t know what to say to her after that, which was unlike him. Her injuries made him feel guilty, an emotion he was not in the habit of embracing. What had he called her once? _My protector._ He had not done a good job of protecting her in return—driven by some misplaced sense of duty to a dead woman and a man without honor, she had nearly died. _What have I done to deserve this kind of loyalty?_

Trying to shove the complicated thoughts aside, he clears his throat to make conversation, speaking in low tones so as to not alert anyone who may be lurking nearby to their presence. 

“Tell me of your traveling companions,” he says to her. “If I am to risk my life to save theirs, I should like to know more about them.”

Moonlight illuminates her hair when she nods, haloing her against the night. 

“Podrick was your brother’s squire in King’s Landing, he felt he had been abandoned when Tyrion escaped. He’s just a boy, an orphan. He somehow heard I was looking for Sansa and followed me in the hopes that where Sansa would be, Tyrion would be also.”

The thought saddened him. _Brother, who else have you hurt?_

“And this Ser Myles?”

“Ser Hyle Hunt,” she corrects. “A hedge knight who has proved useful to us. We are of an age, I had known him from Reny’s army. He left Lord Tarly’s service in Maidenpool to join us.”

“You had known him before? Is he one of your suitors, then? I’ve heard you’ve had a great many.” He is surprised by the obvious jealousy lacing his words.

Even in the dark he can see her eyes grow wide before she stammers her response. “One of my—n…no of course not! How did you—who told you?”

Her discomposure brings a smile back to his lips.

“I had the misfortune of making Ronnet Connington’s acquaintance…he was most unkind.”

“They are all unkind,” she replies, her voice hollow. 

The memories of all the vicious things he’s said to her himself bubble back into his mind. Why had he been so cruel? 

“Words are wind,” he tells her in what he hopes is a gentle tone.

She says nothing, frowning into the darkness. 

He almost says something else, not sure when he became unwilling to see her so glum, when he realizes she’s frowning _at_ something.

Their approach in the dark is slow, but he can now see the unmistakable shadows of corpses hanging from trees before them, hempen rope creaking gently in the light breeze. A solitary crow _quorks_ at them from a branch. 

“We’re close,” she whispers. “Come here.”

He maneuvers his horse closer to hers, so she can reach over and add the finishing touch to his masquerade as her prisoner.

“I trust you,” he says solemnly, meaning it, the puff of his breath hanging visible between them in the cold air. He holds her somber gaze as long as he can before she slips the leather hood over his head, and the world goes dark. 

She leads Honor the rest of the way, and it’s not long before he can smell the scent of fire growing closer on the air. Metal shifting against metal, something scraping in the dirt, then the horse comes to an abrupt stop. 

“Ah, the Kingslayer and his whore!” a man’s gruff voice says nearby.

“Took your bloody time, didn’t you?” Another, just as close.

“His head’s looking rather attached to his neck,” the first man says. “The lady won’t be liking that.”

“I should see Pod and Ser Hyle, first,” Brienne’s voice is firm beside him, a comfort. “To see that she’s made good on her promise.”

“Of course, my lady,” a third voice says gently. “This way.” Jaime recognizes the red priest’s Myrish accent. 

Arms—her arms, for they are far too gentle—haul him off his mount and to his feet. She leads him with a hand on his left shoulder, her grip warm and reassuring.

The air changes as they walk, growing musty and earthen. He can make out whispers and the sound of someone strumming a woodharp nearby. Brienne squeezes his shoulder and they come to a stop beside what must be a fire—he can feel the heat. 

More whispering as Brienne forces him to his knees. “Remove the hood,” the first man’s voice is somewhere in front of him.

Jaime blinks in the dim light of the cave, quickly taking in his surroundings. The cavern is large, a dozen or so outlaws standing near the walls, and, Jaime realizes with shock, a handful of women and children too. _This will not do, I will not kill children tonight._

Before him a hooded figure in grey robes is seated behind a wooden table. _Stoneheart,_ Jaime thinks. As his eyes fall on her she rises, walking around the table to stand directly in front of him. She raises a sallow hand to her hood, dropping it to reveal her face.

Where Lady Catelyn was once beautiful, Stoneheart is a horror. She seems to be in a state of decay, rotting skin giving way in patches to muscle and bone beneath. Whatever Brienne had told him had not prepared him for the reality now standing before him.

He steels himself, painting a droll grin on his face in an attempt to rustle up his Lannister arrogance. “Lady Catelyn, it seems cave dwelling does not agree with your complexion. Why, you look half dead.”

A murmur bounces through the cave as Stoneheart lifts a hand to her ruined neck. “_Kingslayer. You will die tonight,_” she croaks.

“Ah. Respectfully, I must disagree,” he smiles.

Brienne’s grip on his shoulder tightens ever so slightly. “I have brought you the Kingslayer, as you asked. Now bring me Podrick and Ser Hyle.”

Stoneheart gestures to a one-eyed man and a large man in a yellow cloak. They disappear down a dark passage and return moments later with a small boy and a man with a badly bruised and swollen face.

“Ser! My lady!” The boy calls out, fear in his voice. The bruised man nods at Brienne, stoic.

“_His head_,” Stoneheart points at Jaime.

“No,” Brienne responds. “Release them first.”

“He _did this. ‘Jaime Lannister sends his regards.’ Blood on his hands._”

“I sent no such regards,” Jaime replies, his eyes lingering on the gash spanning her neck. “I swore I would not take up arms against Tullys nor Starks, I have stayed true to my word. I had no part in what happened at The Twins, and as of late I brought the siege of Riverrun to an end without bloodshed.”

“Aye, and what was it when you told the lady’s brother first? You’d send his newborn babe over the walls with a trebuchet?” Tom o’ Sevens smirks at him from beside the fire, idly plucking his woodharp.

He feels Brienne flinch beside him. “You,” Jaime says. “You were with them all along?”

“Aye, milord. A man should be careful what he says in front of strangers.” 

“_Do you deny it?_” Stoneheart croaks.

He turns back to her. “No. It was an empty threat, I meant to end the siege without bloodshed, I knew it would work on Edmure. He’s a weak man.” 

“_Lies._”

“You deny Edmure is weak? My lady, even your uncle the Blackfish would not argue—”

“_Enough!_”

“Lady Catelyn,” Brienne’s voice is firm, sure. “I ask you to keep your word. Release Podrick and Ser Hyle, then I will give you the oathbreaker.”

_Oathbreaker._ The word stings more than usual, coming from her lips. 

Stoneheart’s eyes are cold, but she nods to the men holding the prisoners. A willowy, hard looking girl cuts them loose. The boy seems to want to run to Brienne, but she stills him with a sharp look. 

“Ser Hyle, take Podrick and wait outside. I will join you when this is over.” Brienne’s hand leaves his shoulder to touch Oathkeeper’s hilt as her two companions stagger out of the cave. 

“_End it,_” Stoneheart says. 

Brienne draws her sword, pointing it at the dirt. “He swore a vow,” she says. “To find your daughters and bring them home. He has not broken that vow.”

“_You swore a holy oath,_” Stoneheart rasps. “_You did not swear it to_ him.”

“And you pledged to ask no service of me that would bring me dishonor. My lady, there is no honor in this. I ask that you let us go so that we may uphold our oath to you.”

Stoneheart is agitated, uncompromising—he’s not seeing how this can go well. In retrospect, he thinks Brienne was far too optimistic about their ability to escape unscathed.

That’s when he realizes, with sinking clarity, that she still plans on dying for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the books LSH mostly has translators for her, but honestly that’s a pain in the ass way to have a conversation that moves the action forward, so let’s just imagine everyone’s standing close enough to understand her the first time around.


	4. Brienne II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I will not. I cannot. He has broken no oath,” Brienne’s voice is steady. “But I did. I should have been there to protect you. I should have given my life for yours, and I did not. Take it, now. Take me instead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter are "Red Door" by Julien Baker and "R.I.P." by Mikky Ekko, and can be found in the [fic playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=Tej86BMBT7GLJ1xBJnFGSA) on Spotify.

Jaime turned his Lannister shine on, as she hoped he would. If anyone could talk his way out of this, it would be him. 

But Brienne had known all along it would not work. She’d never been any good at talking anyway—that’s one of the reasons she had learned to fight. She could only hope to get Pod and Ser Hyle to safety, and to offer herself up in Jaime’s place. She has to protect his honor. 

_No chance, and no choice._

“_Kill him,_” Lady Catelyn rasps. 

“I will not. I cannot. He has broken no oath,” Brienne’s voice is steady. “But I did. I should have been there to protect you. I should have given my life for yours, and I did not. Take it, now. Take me instead.” 

“Wench,” Jaime murmurs warningly, shifting beside her, but she will not look at him.

“_I will take both of you,_” Lady Catelyn smiles, her face somehow even more grotesque for it. 

“No,” Brienne remains firm. “My life, for his.”

A murmur echoes through the cavern when Thoros suddenly steps forward, addressing Lady Catelyn. “Are you not tired of this vengeance? The slaughter? This cannot be R’holler’s will.”

“That’s not for you to decide, wizard,” the yellow cloaked man spits out. “This isn’t Beric’s Brotherhood anymore, it’s hers.”

“No, it’s not,” Thoros sighs sadly, slowly drawing his sword.

Then several things happen at once.

A man shrieks out in pain from near the cave’s entrance, followed by the crash of steel on steel. Long Jeyne calls for the children and their mothers to follow her outside, Thoros blocks an attack from one of his own men, Lady Catelyn shrieks in anger, and Brienne feels a weight on her calf, a warm hand pulling her dagger loose from where she had hidden it in her boot. 

Jaime drags the blade up his bindings, freeing himself. “Time to dance, wench,” he grins. 

“Jaime, no, you must get out, save yourself—” at that moment a man charges towards them, sword aloft. She raises Oathkeeper to meet his blade, the two weapons clashing hard. The man is young, unpracticed. She finds her opening after only a few moments of fighting, dodging his thrust and piercing his throat. The man falls to his knees with both hands desperately trying to stop the violent rush of blood, sword forgotten in the dirt beside him as he dies. 

“Thanks for that,” Jaime hefts the dead man’s sword into his hand. “So, would you like that bastard in the piss yellow cloak or his one-eyed friend?” A hypothetical question, of course, because they’re already being charged by three other outlaws. 

Her splinted arm screams in protest but she pays it no mind. They turn in sync, coming together back-to-back as if they’d done this a thousand times before. Block, parry, attack. She rains her strokes down on the two men in front of her, easily deflecting their blows. They’re dead in minutes, and she sweeps around to help Jaime. She’s surprised to see he’s already dispatched the outlaw before him. 

“Don’t look too surprised, it will hurt my fragile Lannister ego.” His emerald eyes are gleaming in delight.

Before she can respond, two more men charge them and she rushes forward to meet the attack. 

The one-eyed man stumbles back as her sword pierces the flesh above his hip, sending his weapon flying into the shadows as she pulls up and slices through his gut, killing him. In the moment of respite that follows she glances around, her eyes first finding Jaime where he’s holding his own against his foe. _He was modest about his practice with his left hand,_ she thinks, _he’s able to defend himself much better than he let on._ She then finds Pod and Ser Hyle, armed and fighting near the cave entrance. _When did they come back?_ She moves to help them but pauses when she sees a shadow in the corner of her vision.

She turns to see Lady Catelyn moving with purpose towards Jaime, Brienne’s discarded dagger clutched in one puckered hand. 

“Jaime!” Brienne shouts, but he does not hear her over the din of clashing metal. His back is turned to Stoneheart—he will never see it coming. 

Without thinking, Brienne rushes forward and plunges Oathkeeper into Stoneheart’s back. It slides with sickening ease through her soft gray flesh before piercing out the other side, straight through her heart. Before Brienne’s eyes, blue flames erupt from the point of impact and begin to lick up the length of the blade where it sits inside Stoneheart.

Stunned by both the flames and what she has just done, Brienne pulls her sword from the ruined flesh. The revenant that was once Lady Catelyn, the woman who had helped steal Brienne away from certain death at Renly’s camp, who had shown her respect and kindness, who had brought her into her service, trusted her with the lives of her daughters and her most important prisoner, crumples to the ground as her corpse burns. Dead once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing about sword fighting so I’m keeping things as vague as possible. Also you may have noticed I have Brienne calling LSH Lady Catelyn, whereas Jaime refers to her as Lady Stoneheart. I feel like Jaime would be better able to disconnect Stoneheart from who she once was, whereas Brienne’s emotional connection to Catelyn makes it harder for her to make that mental change. Until Jaime’s life is threatened in earnest, she finally sees her as Stoneheart.
> 
> “No chance, and no choice.” AFfC, Brienne VII


	5. Jaime III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end it is Jaime who steps forward and takes Lady Stoneheart’s head from her flayed neck in one quick movement, lest anyone try to resurrect Catelyn Stark again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 was pretty short, so I thought I'd post chapter 5 this week as well. 
> 
> The [fic playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=zmLiBKv1TEy-6d8zBegvAg) has been updated with this chapter's song, "Mass" by Phoria.

He disarms the man in front of him and whips around just in time to see Oathkeeper’s tip glinting at him from where it sits in Stoneheart’s chest, blue flames seemingly emerging from her corpse and licking all the way down to the hilt in Brienne’s grasp. 

He thinks he remembers having a dream like this, once.

Brienne’s eyes are wide, made even more impossibly blue by the flames. All at once her face contorts with an odd mixture of triumph and torment. She wrenches the sword clean of Stoneheart, who topples into a fiery heap. The sound of fighting ceases around them, a stunned silence overtaking the cave. The members of the Brotherhood simply stare at Brienne where she stands above the conflagration of Lady Stoneheart, flaming sword still held out before her.

The flames on both sword and Stoneheart flicker once more before going out completely. Thoros is the first to toss his own weapon aside, kneeling before Brienne open-mouthed. The rest look around uneasily, before following suit and lowering their weapons in stunned resignation. Once safety seems assured, Podrick and Hunt lower their weapons as well, looking nervously between each other and Brienne.

In the end it is Jaime who steps forward and takes Lady Stoneheart’s head from her flayed neck in one quick movement, lest anyone try to resurrect Catelyn Stark again.

Brienne has taken a few steps back, still staring disbelievingly at Oathkeeper. She finally looks up to see the fighting has stopped, staring mutely at the men before her. 

“My lady,” Thoros whispers to her, awed.

Jaime steps forward and places a hand on her shoulder, gently turning her face to him. “Brienne,” he says steadily. “It’s done.”

She blinks at him, her eyes suddenly coming into focus. At once he sees tears pooling there, and her face crumples under his palm. 

“Come outside, you need air.” He gently guides her to the mouth of the cave, stepping confidently past the remaining members of the Brotherhood, daring them to stop him.

The women and children outside part to let them pass. Jaime guides Brienne out into the night before her strength suddenly leaves her and she collapses onto all fours to retch into the dirt. Jaime kneels beside her, supporting her as best he can with an arm across her shoulders. He hears footsteps behind them and glances back to see Podrick and Hunt rushing out of the cave.

“Ser…my lady?” The boy is bleeding from a cut across his forehead but doesn’t seem to take any notice of it. He rushes forward, sliding to his knees beside Brienne. Hunt’s face is a swollen map of cuts and bruises and he is limping from a gash across his thigh, holding a hand to another on his ribs, but neither seem mortal.

“You came back,” Jaime says to the boy.

“Long Jeyne gave us weapons,” Podrick whispers. “She said Thoros told her we’d need to fight to save our lady.” 

Jaime glances at the tall girl where she stands with the children, grateful for her boldness.

Brienne shudders, spitting once more into the earth before wiping a shaky wrist across her mouth. Pale as a ghost, she settles back onto her heels, but Jaime does not let go. She clutches Oathkeeper still in her hand, and Podrick reaches to gently peel her fingers away. 

“Your hand…is it burnt?” the squire asks, holding it gingerly in his own lap. He shifts his gaze over Brienne’s head, looking worriedly at Jaime. 

Jaime shifts to better see, and at once understands. Though the sword was still smoking slightly in the grass, her hand was unhurt from where it had been on the pommel.

“Brienne,” Hunt murmurs, warningly. The remaining members of the Brotherhood are making their way out of the cave, keeping a wary distance. 

She turns to look at them, rounding on Thoros. “What did you do?” 

Thoros holds his hands in front of him in appeasement. “Nothing, my lady! That was not my doing…I have never seen anything like it…only heard tales…”

“What tales?” Jaime asks sharply.

“A red sword, the flaming sword of Azor Ahai, he who was prophesied to come again to drive darkness out of the world.”

Jaime glances at Oathkeeper lying innocently in the grass beside Brienne, the blade’s red ripples visible even in the moonlight, dark as the streaks of Stoneheart’s blood still upon it. Even he cannot deny the truth of this night, a woman raised from the dead, a sword erupting in otherworldly flame. 

“I am not him,” Brienne answers quietly. 

But Thoros continues on eagerly. “The flames have been showing me the same visions, over and over, but I could not make sense of them. The world plunged into darkness, a great battle in the north, and a great warrior with a flaming sword to bring the light of R’holler back to us.”

“You have it wrong,” Brienne says pleadingly. “I am no great warrior, I am only looking for the Stark girls, to protect them, to keep my…my oath…” The sound she makes then is wrenching, her grief echoing into the night. 

“Beric should never have brought her back. I questioned why R’holler allowed it when there was so much darkness in her,” Thoros continues. “But now I know, she had to come back so that you could end it.”

Brienne seems to barely hear him. 

“Are we just supposed to let them be on their way, then?” The man in the yellow cloak interjects bitterly, staring daggers at Jaime.

“Aye, Lem, you are mistaken. Our fate lies in her hands, not the other way ‘round.” Thoros answers, nodding pointedly where Brienne’s blade rests in the grass.

She looks pleadingly at Jaime, and he knows she’s asking for the decision to be his. He nods.

“You will disband. The War of the Five Kings is over, the Riverlands have seen enough death,” he uses his most commanding tone, hoping it will convince the men and women to follow Thoros’ lead. “Go back to your homes, leave this vengeance behind. Or go to the Wall and take the black if it’s justice you seek. Protect the realm.”

There is some quiet muttering amongst the men, but Jaime is relieved to see they seem to still be deferring to Thoros.

“We will meet again in the north, my lady,” Thoros smiles. 

Brienne simply stares at him, wary.

The men now formerly of the Brotherhood eventually take their leave, heading northward into the night. Long Jeyne gathers the women and children with talk of returning to the Inn at the Crossroads. No one wants to linger in this cursed place for long.

Brienne insists on burying Stoneheart herself before their group can depart as well. She allows young Podrick to help, after he explains to her that he wants to pay his respects to Lady Sansa’s mother. Jaime would have helped as well, if only to spare her further strain on her injuries, but a one-handed man cannot work a shovel. Instead he begrudgingly tends to Hunt’s wounds while she and Podrick dig.

“You know, this is your fault,” Hunt says as Jaime works. “Your pretty sword and your pretty face.”

Jaime grits his teeth, but does not answer.

“She should be back home on her island, singing to her father, watching the ships roll in. Out of harm’s way,” Hunt continues. Jaime cannot disagree with him. He wants her safe as well, though he cannot help but think singing at her father’s knee is no place for a woman with Brienne’s singular talents.

“Maybe I should propose again, she may be so upset she forgets herself and accepts this time,” Hunt says idly. 

“_This_ time?” Brienne had not mentioned _that_ when he'd asked about Hunt.

“You sound surprised,” Hunt grimaces as Jaime dabs at the wound on his leg. “Tarth would be quite a prize for a man like me.” 

“She deserves better than a man like you.”

“And you,” Hunt replies pointedly. Jaime can see the man’s derision even under his swollen features. “But she’s not exactly overrun by suitors either, is she? And that was before the bite…”

Jaime feels his phantom fingers clenching, and he wills himself not to knock Hunt’s teeth out as he did Red Ronnet’s. “Why don’t you keep your opinions about the lady to yourself while I’ve got a needle to your skin. I’m not as steady a stitcher as I once was.”

Hunt raises his eyebrows in mock surprise, but blessedly keeps his mouth shut while Jaime finishes. 

A light snow has begun to fall in the grey dawn by the time the grave is finished. As flowers had long given way to the coming winter, Brienne instead fashions a wreath from a bough of evergreen and places it on the fresh grave. Jaime watches from a distance whilst Brienne stands over it, head bowed and shoulders shuddering, allowing her the space to grieve. _She offered her life for mine._ The knowledge prickles. He can’t remember a time in his life when anyone valued his life above their own. Something tightens in his chest when she turns to rejoin them.

“Podrick, my sword?”

“I—I went to lift it but well…it’s still warm.” The boy looks over to where Oathkeeper still rests in the grass. Though a dusting of fresh snow now blankets the ground, the sword and the area around it are completely free of it, having melted from the warmth of the blade. 

“I don’t know what happened…” Brienne says quietly, kneeling beside the sword. She reaches a hand out, slowly grasping the hilt.

“Do you suppose Thoros was telling the truth?” Podrick asks.

“There is no truth to fairytales,” Brienne replies sadly before handing Oathkeeper to Jaime, a question in her eyes. 

The instant his hand touches the pommel a comfortable heat flows through his arm. “It is…a strange thing,” he concedes, testing the perfect weight of the Valyrian steel before handing it back to Brienne. “I suppose you can keep it in your bedroll at night for warmth.”

She laughs outright at that, a light momentarily coming back to her eyes.

The trip back to his army’s encampment finds them sharing their two horses between the four of them. Suddenly Jaime has no desire to return to with haste, so he suggests they keep a slow pace and only ride one to a horse rather than doubling up. He makes up some lie about not wanting to tire the horses, and while it doesn’t sound convincing to his ears they all go along with his suggestion. Brienne insists her squire take hers first so he can get some rest, though she must be dead on her feet as well. In a fit of gallantry Jaime tries to offer her his own horse, but she refuses.

“Perhaps Ser Hyle would like to ride, though?” she asks.

If he’s being honest, Jaime would rather butcher his horse for meat than allow Hunt to ride it.

“I’m a younger man than the Kingslayer and my leg is not too bad, I’ve no mind of walking.”

“Ser Jaime is not so old,” Podrick pipes up.

He squints fondly at the boy and Brienne catches his eye again, barely suppressing a smile as they head out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I don’t necessarily prescribe to the theory of Brienne being Azor Ahai, but the imagery in Jaime’s Weirwood dream and the red in the twin blades forged from Ice is too much not to at least explore a little…


	6. Brienne III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I broke my oath to Lady Catelyn. I didn’t protect her, I _killed_ her,” she says softly, voice breaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter are "Hush Hush Baby" by Lxandra and "With Fire" by EXES. Everything can be found [here, in the playlist.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=u8rZGRenSAGy4o71S7_GAg)

They come to a stop not long after starting out, when poor Pod nods off and nearly slips out of the saddle. They decide to make camp along the banks of the stream they’d been following back to Pennytree. The stream is down a steep slope, and while there is some shelter along the eroded wall of earth that had once been the water’s high point, it does not offer as much protection as Brienne would like. 

She feels her stoicism beginning to slip now that they’ve stopped moving. She kneels to begin a fire, Podrick already asleep under her cloak nearby. Ser Hyle and Jaime are bickering beside the horses, seemingly arguing about where to tie them off. When they eventually join her she realizes she’s been staring blankly into the fire she’s lit. She wonders if Thoros really does see visions when he gazes into the flames.

“—she’s still recovering from her injuries, and I’ve been held prisoner for days, surely you can take the first watch.” The contempt is evident in Hyle’s voice as the two men approach.

Her eyes drop to her hands, dirt caked under her fingernails from digging the grave.

“You can both sleep, I will take first watch.” She stands swiftly to leave them behind, walking to the stream’s edge and kneeling to rinse the dirt of Lady Catelyn’s grave away. 

Her chest constricts with grief as she remembers the courage she saw in Lady Catelyn, how it was what made her want to pledge herself to the woman. She remembers the look on her lady’s face when she kneeled before her and swore the vow. And she can still see her ruined face in the cave, can still feel the way the blade slid so easily into her body, can see the flames flickering to life along the Valyrian steel. Oathkeeper rests at her hip now, still so inexplicably warm that she can feel the heat of it even through the scabbard. _Was Thoros telling it true?_

She kneels at the water’s edge for quite a while, sinking under the weight of her fresh sins, hoping the others will have fallen asleep by the time she returns to the fire. Her splinted arm throbs a steady beat, overworked as it was from fighting and grave digging. The pain radiates throughout her whole body. She presses the other hand to her tender ribs, wincing at the contact. 

She’s startled into standing by the sound of footsteps behind her, hastily wiping at the fresh tears prickling her eyes. She can tell even without looking that it’s Jaime. He crouches beside beside the stream, dipping a cloth into the water. 

“There is dirt on your face,” he says simply. He does not ask permission before bringing the damp cloth to her skin, using his golden hand under her chin to hold her face still.

She stares down at her feet, unable to look at him. 

“I broke my oath to Lady Catelyn. I didn’t protect her, I _killed_ her,” she says softly, voice breaking.

“You released her. That was not Lady Catelyn. It was her body, yes, but there was nothing left of her in it, only vengeance,” he gently tilts her face toward him, seeking her eyes out with his own. “What you did is not dishonorable, do not allow it to consume you.”

“Do you not consider yourself dishonorable for killing Aerys?” she whispers. “I know that you do. Does it eat at you the way killing Lady Catelyn eats at me? What right have I to find her daughters and keep them safe, when I’ve killed their mother?”

“How is it you know me better than anyone?” he sighs, releasing her face to wipe his hand down his own. “You honor the Stark girls by dispatching of that abomination. As for Aerys…killing him was the right thing to do, it was my finest act though I will forever be remembered as an oathbreaker and Kingslayer for doing so. Killing him does not eat at me…though the consequences do. I wasn’t able to fully understand what that meant, until I met you.”

“I…” she doesn’t know what to say. _What do I have to do with it?_

“You hide it well behind the Warrior, but you have the Maiden’s heart, Brienne.” 

She furrows her brow at that and he smiles at her expression. “You think it a bad thing, I know, but it is your strength." 

She sighs. “I have tried to not be—“

“To not be yourself?” he interrupts.

His hand returns to her face. Even through the sorrow and pain her skin sings under his touch. His eyes are soft and incredibly green as she searches them with her own. His thumb brushes her lips, eyes dropping without warning to her mouth. Her breath catches and part of her wants to turn and run, even as she wants more than anything to close the distance between them. 

“Ser?”

But then his lips are upon hers before she can form a clear thought in either direction. 

_Oh._

He smells of leather and cedar and she forgets herself completely, closing her eyes, her mind going blank but for the feel of him against her lips as he keeps kissing her. And kissing her, and kissing her.

All rational thought abandons her as she sighs into him, her hands fisting into the fabric at his chest, her heartbeat hammering in her ears. His beard tickles her chin as he deepens the kiss, her mouth opening to his in response, a shiver running through her center at the first touch of his tongue against her own. 

He breaks away and she suddenly feels empty, like a part of her she didn’t even know was there is missing. He rests his nose against hers, his breath heavy and warm on her face. She’s aching for him to kiss her again, but suddenly feels foolish. She’s waiting for the jape, the tease, the rose thrown in her face, but it doesn’t come. 

“I swore a vow…” he whispers against her skin. She thinks of his white cloak, of his twin. She thinks of pulling out of his embrace and walking away, but her body will not obey her commands. Instead she leans forward, bringing his lips back to hers. 

He responds in kind, any doubts he may have not apparent in the fervor with which he returns her kiss. She is losing herself to him, distantly aware of Pod and Ser Hyle asleep nearby, when they break apart again at the sound of a branch snapping somewhere close.

Before either of them are able to find the source of the sound, she hears the unmistakable sound of a bolt thwacking through the air. Jaime stiffens under her hands and the sharp tip of the quarrel slides through his right shoulder, his blood glistening at her in the morning sun. 

It’s then that she sees him, perhaps twenty paces behind Jaime, in his battered yellow cloak, leaning over the crossbow to load another bolt. Jaime sees him too, though the pain of his wound sends him to one knee.

“You missed, you idiot. Were you aiming for my head?” Jaime’s efforts to taunt Lem are somewhat diminished by the pain lacing his every word.

“Podrick! Ser Hyle! To arms!” Brienne shouts, furiously unsheathing Oathkeeper and advancing on their attacker.

She moves faster than Lem must have anticipated, and she’s upon him just as he’s raising the weapon again. But she has the reach, thrusting her sword forward to knock the crossbow out of his hands. She places the point of her sword at his throat, glowering at him.

Defenseless and defiant he sneers at her. “I see ‘Kingslayer’s Whore’ was an apt nickname.”

“Why?” Brienne demands, ignoring him. “He let you go, why do this?”

“Lions took everything I held dear. I’ve nothing left to lose.”

“There is one thing,” she snarls, her voice like steel as she slides the blade through his neck. 

The hilt is still warm in her hands as she draws it back out, though no flames erupt this time. Lem’s corpse drops to the ground and without giving it a second glance she whirls back to Jaime. Podrick and Ser Hyle must have been roused by her shouts, as her squire is at Jaime’s side and the knight has his sword drawn.

“We should’ve killed them all back at the cave,” Hyle says unhelpfully. 

Brienne throws him an annoyed glance as she rushes back to Jaime.

“Bloody crossbows, so original,” he winces. “How bad is it?”

“It’s gone straight through ser,” Pod answers.

“Taking that quarrel out here in the woods could kill him, I’ve seen it happen on the battlefield,” Hyle explains, arriving at Brienne’s side to look down at Jaime. “He needs a maester.”

Brienne kneels before him. “We should take you back to your army.”

“No,” Jaime grunts. “We’re closer to Harroway than Pennytree. Besides, I fear if I lose consciousness they’ll never believe you mean no harm, carting a wounded Kingslayer along with you.”

It’s a fair point. “Harroway, then. Can you ride?”

He nods, though his pain is clear to see. 

Before they depart she has Pod boil some wine to pour over the wound, though unsure if they will be able to stave off infection with the shaft still in. She winds a length of clean linen around both sides of his shoulder to stanch the bleeding. 

They have to double up on horses now in order to make better time. Jaime seated in front of her casts her mind back to another journey, another injury. “At least we don’t have my rotting hand swinging between us,” he winces when he tries to laugh.

“Save your strength,” she murmurs to him. He had survived the loss of his hand and the infection that followed, surely he could survive this. She would not allow herself to think of another possibility.

They stop outside Harroway just after midday with Jaime’s pain getting to be too much to bear, sending Pod ahead to try to find a maester. 

He returns some time later, an older man in tow. Brienne rests her hand on Oathkeeper’s hilt but relaxes as they approach, recognizing Septon Meribald and Dog behind him.

“Thank the gods!” he calls out as Dog bounds forward to lick Ser Hyle’s bruised face. “I had prayed to each of the Seven for your safety after you were captured. And who is this?” He stops before Brienne, looking past her to where Jaime rests his good shoulder against a tree, the hood of his cloak obscuring his face.

“He is injured, we must find him a maester,” she answers, ignoring the question.

“Yes, Podrick told me. Well the town is desolate, it flooded not long ago. But the ferry still operates. They don’t normally go as far as the Quiet Isle but I am known to them, so they’ve agreed to grant us passage. Though they will also require coin.”

“Coin we have, just get us to the ferry.” She glances worriedly at Jaime. His skin is growing pale and sweat dots his forehead. He has not spoken for ages, pain etched clearly on his face. Neither of them have slept for well over a day, she knows he will not be able to cling to consciousness much longer.

The ferrymen eye their group suspiciously as they board, horses and all, but say nothing after Brienne dumps a handful of gold in the captain’s hands. 

“The tide will be in your favor,” Meribald calls from the shore as they cast off. She nods in thanks, helping Jaime settle as comfortably as he can. His breath is labored, each movement seems to take a great effort. 

“Not long now,” she says, dabbing at his damp forehead with her sleeve. 

“I kissed you,” he whispers, closing his eyes wearily. 

Even now, she feels her her heart flutter and her skin flush pink. “And I kissed you.”

He loses consciousness with a smile ghosting across his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the Brotherhood was holed up at Hollow Hill I’ve fudged some distances for it to make more sense to deviate to the Quiet Isle rather than Pennytree. For my purposes lets say they were somewhere between Pennytree and the Trident ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. Jaime IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A warm room, the sound of a fire crackling, waves lapping against rock in the distance, his body aching, a gentle hand in his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Songs](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=3uDEJy6YRiuHbpaRSLj5KQ) for this chapter are "Shoulders" by Levi Matthan and "Promise" by Ben Howard.

A warm room, the sound of a fire crackling, waves lapping against rock in the distance, his body aching, a gentle hand in his. 

_Is this a dream?_

He remembers pain, he remembers trying to hide how much pain there was. He remembers bright blue eyes blazing. He remembers them looking at him with concern. 

He is vaguely aware of the sounds of a hushed conversation nearby but he cannot make out what they’re saying. He feels as if he’s asleep underwater, like he’s floating under the waves of the Sunset Sea. But no, the waters off the Rock aren’t this blue. This shade is different. Like sapphires.

_Brienne._

He does not know how long he lies there, awake but not awake. With enormous effort he eventually opens his eyes, blinking away the crust of sleep until the dim room comes into focus. 

The windowless walls are stone, arching up to a squat ceiling with a smokehole in the center. Saddlebags sit in a corner, his gold hand resting atop the pile. 

Someone has tied his hair into a loose knot at the nape of his neck, and he finds his beard has been trimmed. He rises on his good arm, the furs that cover him slipping to reveal his bare chest and a clean length of linen wrapped around his shoulder. It does not hurt as much as he thought it would, just a dull ache where before there had been searing pain with each breath. Gingerly, he lifts a corner of the bandage, surprised to see the wound soft and pink, having been stitched closed by an adept hand. _How long have I been in this bed?_

Brienne sleeps beneath her cloak in a low chair beside his pallet, long legs stretched out before her. The bandage he tied across her cheek is gone, the bite appearing nearly healed though still horrible and purple against her pale skin. 

He cannot help the slow smile that spreads across his face at the sight of her. _I kissed her._ He hadn’t even realized he wanted to until he was standing before her in the forest, breath catching in his chest, finding he couldn’t look away from her trembling lips. He’d felt moments of desire for women who weren’t Cersei and never acted upon those impulses before. But with Brienne standing before him like a wounded animal—and yet somehow still as fierce as he’d ever seen her—he found he simply could not help himself.

As if reading his thoughts she stirs, her eyes traveling the room until landing upon him sitting upright on his pallet. 

“You’re awake!” She hastens from her chair, kneeling beside him on the floor. “How is your pain? The Elder Brother did not think you’d wake until nightfall!”

“I am very pleased to not have become the second Lannister killed this year by crossbow,” he smiles grimly. “How long have we been here?”

“Five days, the Elder Brother had been feeding you milk of the poppy to help you rest and heal, but he felt you were well enough at last to go without,” she returns his smile shakily. “I must tell him you’ve woken, he will want to see to you.”

And with that she’s up and out the door before he can say another word.

She returns not long after, snowflakes melting in her hair and a man he assumes to be the Elder Brother behind her, a basket of food in his arms. The man is tall, with a strong jaw and a perspicacious air about him. He looks like a knight in all but his attire; instead of armor he wears the cowled brown robes of a penitent. 

“Ser Jaime, it is good to see you awake. Lady Brienne tells me you are feeling well?”

Jaime shifts under the Elder Brother’s shrewd gaze. “I am.”

“Good, very good. I am pleased we were able to help.”

“And I thank you for all that you’ve done, I have not seen such accomplished healing even from the maesters of King’s Landing. I would repay you for your hospitality—“ 

The older man cuts him off. “Nonsense, if you feel you owe a debt pray to the Seven to guide you.”

_I believe that would make me the first Lannister to repay a debt with prayer,_ Jaime muses. 

“But now you must get your strength back,” he places the basket beside Jaime’s pallet. “There is food and drink in there, and if you are feeling up to it later I think a walk outside will do you good.”

Jaime nods his thanks.

“Good,” the Elder Brother turns to Brienne. “Let us leave Ser Jaime to his meal. Lady Brienne, if you will come with me?”

“I should like her to stay…” Jaime protests.

“I thank you, Ser Jaime, but that is not how we do things on the Quiet Isle.”

Brienne obediently follows the Elder Brother out without so much as a glance his way, leaving silence in their wake.

Many hours pass before his door opens again and Podrick and Hunt enter to find him struggling back into his clothes. 

“The Elder Brother says we’re to take you to stretch your legs,” Hunt tells him, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Do you need help with this?” the squire has picked up his golden hand from atop the saddlebags. 

“No, I’ll go without,” Jaime replies, shrugging his cloak on. “Where is Brienne, will she be joining us?”

“She’ll catch up.” Hunt offers no further explanation.

The isle is hilly and Jaime quickly finds himself stopping to catch his breath, keenly aware of the scornful looks of passing brothers.

“Why are they looking at me that way? Not happy to be playing host to the Kingslayer?” 

Podrick shakes his head and leans close to explain. “Men and women aren’t permitted to share a roof on the isle unless they’re married. Last time we were here I wanted to say with ser, I mean my lady, but it wasn’t allowed.”

“So they find it odd that Brienne was sleeping in my cottage though we are not wed?”

“_Brienne’s_ cottage,” Hunt interrupts. “Those huts are for women. Pod and I share a cell in the cloisters and you should be there too but Brienne insisted you be put with her. Said she looked after you when you lost your hand and she’d look after you again. She looked so fearsome he dared not object, though I do think he regrets the break with tradition.” 

Jaime smiles to himself. Yes, he can picture Brienne pulled up to her full height, snarling at anyone foolish enough to disagree with her. 

They arrive at a small stone barn, presumably built to house the sheep currently grazing along the snowy hillside. Hunt pushes the door open, and they enter to find Brienne kicking straw and dung out of the way to clear a circle, two wooden practice swords tucked under her arm. 

“Ser Jaime! I did not think you would be feeling up to joining us,” she says, startled.

In truth, he didn’t know where Hunt and Podrick were taking him, but he’s pleased to be anywhere she is.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m up to sparring,” he rolls his shoulder gingerly. “But I would watch.”

“The Elder Brother said we should take him with us today,” Podrick explains, taking the sword Brienne holds out to him. 

As Jaime seats himself on an upturned barrel he thinks he sees a faint blush flower across her cheeks, though it could just be the cold. 

She sets herself to taking Podrick through a long series of drills while Hunt leans against the wall, lazily eating an apple. The man seems utterly useless, he can’t imagine why Brienne allows him to travel with them. 

Some time later he is, perhaps too enthusiastically, imagining all the ways he could hurt the younger knight when the barn door opens and a hulking figure steps inside. He can’t hide the shock he feels to see Sandor Clegane, clad in brown-and-dun cowl, glowering down at him.

“Clegane, is that you?” Jaime takes a step back. “Does no one stay dead anymore?”

Brienne’s head snaps around. “Clegane? Sandor Clegane? But the Elder Brother said you were dead!”

Still, the man who had once been The Hound does not speak.

“Is Arya alive? Is Sansa? Do you know where they would have gone?” Brienne starts to walk towards Clegane but seems to think better of it, stopping in the middle of the barn. 

Clegane narrows his eyes and nods once, reaching into his robes to produce a small scrap of parchment. He holds it out for Brienne and she cautiously crosses the remaining distance to take it from him. As soon as the paper is in her hands, he leaves. 

“What does it say?” Hunt pushes off the wall to get a better look at the paper.

“It just says ‘Try The Vale.’” She looks up, briefly meeting Jaime’s eye before looking to Podrick and Hunt. “The Vale, then. That’s where we should go next.”

Something breaks inside him when he realizes his duty to the crown means he won’t be going with her.

After some discussion of whether or not they’d be able to convince Clegane to be more forthcoming, they return to their practice, Brienne eventually coaxing Hunt to spar with Podrick in her place so she can better observe his form.

The afternoon wears on and Jaime comes to the realization that she is studiously avoiding him. Once they finish for the day she leaves the barn without so much as a word to him, and slips out of the evening meal before he can speak with her. He kissed her, and now something seems to have broken between them. He’d rather go back to her scowling disapprovingly at his every word than have her completely unable to look at him.

Kissing her had been impulsive. Foolish. Of course she regretted it, regretted him. His reputation as Kingslayer, his carnal knowledge of his own twin, his lack of honor—he would bring ruin to her. Hunt was right about one thing, she deserves better.

Jaime returns to the cottage after supper, a dull drumbeat of pain now throbbing in his shoulder. He opens the door and nearly runs into Brienne, clearly on her way out. 

She’s startled, dropping the hauberk she was holding. “Ser Jaime, I was just gathering my things. I’m being moved to the cottage next door,” she says, pink rising again in her cheeks. “The Elder Brother said you may keep this one, whilst you continue to heal.”

“Oh,” is all the eloquence he manages to come up with in response.

She bends to pick up the hauberk before edging around him to leave. 

_I must fix it._

“Brienne—wait,” he manages to blurt out, feeling foolish. “May I have a word?”

She pauses, holding the door open, the frigid night gusting behind her. 

“I apologize for my behavior. With the…in kissing you. It was unchivalrous of me.” 

Her expression is inscrutable. “Perhaps…the emotions of the day…” she trails off. “We were exhausted. Delirious.”

_She_ does _regret it,_ he thinks, heart sinking. _And she is too kind to say it._ “Yes, emotions were indeed…high,” he hesitates, swallowing thickly. “It will not happen again. You have been a friend to me, Brienne, and I overstepped.”

She jerks her head in what he takes for a nod. “As you say, Ser Jaime.”

She closes the door then, leaving him alone once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh these dumb idiots, I love them so much. Don’t worry, all is not lost, Jaime just needs to get out of his own way.
> 
> I think it’s sort of implied in canon that the Elder Brother has magical healing abilities, and while I think there’s a lot more we’ve yet to learn about him there wasn’t really a place to explore it in this fic. But if you’re wondering why Brienne’s cheek is scarring over so quickly, it’s because he also tended to her off-page.


	8. Brienne IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so each day passes much the same as the one before. Brienne and the others help as much as they can, before retiring after the midday meal to the old barn to train with swords. After a few awkward days around Ser Jaime following his apology, they have fallen back into a familiar camaraderie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Songs for this chapter](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=rkMO41JhQz-G-dDp5RLmug) are "Hope Is A Heartache" by LEON, "As I Walk Into the Sea" by Allie Crow Buckley and "everything i wanted" by Billie Eilish.

The storm that blows in from the Narrow Sea brings with it snow that has been falling fast and heavy for near on a fortnight, making leaving the isle or even so much as sending a raven an impossible task. Brienne tries to busy herself, to be of use, but the brothers don’t know what to do with her. They first assign her women’s tasks, but she is woefully inept. She has never been good at the more ladylike pursuits, which only becomes more apparent when the brothers attempt to enlist her to help darn clothing. The day the Elder Brother deems her arm healed he takes the needle from her hand and replaces it with a shovel, and she happily clears paths in the snow instead.

She works beside Sandor Clegane, though none of her attempts to engage him in conversation about the Stark girls have made him break his vow of silence. Still, she finds herself trusting him.

And so each day passes much the same as the one before. Brienne and the others help as much as they can, before retiring after the midday meal to the old barn to train with swords. After a few awkward days around Ser Jaime following his apology, they have fallen back into a familiar camaraderie. 

She hadn’t known how to act around him, after he kissed her. While Jaime was asleep and healing she had too much time to think on what happened. Too much time to wonder what he meant by kissing her—to much time to worry that he did not mean it. Had he kissed her out of relief? Out of pity? The kiss was an unanswered question, an interrupted sentence. She almost wondered if she had dreamt it all. 

So she talked herself into believing it was a mistake, even if she wanted him to take her back into his arms, to put his mouth on hers and kiss her until she could no longer remember her name—only she did not know how to tell him so. Then, before she could figure out a way, he apologized, his expression unreadable. She heard herself agreeing with him even though he is all that she wants. 

But this way is easier, she tells herself. Uncomplicated. This way makes sense. She is the Maid of Tarth, ugly and broad and large, and he is _Jaime Lannister_. The golden lion, Lord Commander—they do not even belong in the same sentence, let alone in each other’s arms. So she tells herself she is content to pass the afternoons in the drafty little barn, learning from Ser Jaime as much as Podrick does, quietly bursting with pride when he compliments how well she has taught her squire. She stifles smiles when Jaime manages gets the better of Ser Hyle, and suppresses shudders when his hand grazes the small of her back whilst demonstrating a particular move. He even spars with her once his shoulder heals enough, and though she beats him easily he is determined to improve. So they go again and again, and the following days as well. She’ll take being around him like this if it’s all she can get, so she carefully folds her love away into a small corner of her heart and tells herself it is better this way. 

The storm will break eventually, and he will go back to his army, to his responsibilities, while she will resume her search for Lady Sansa. And perhaps one day when the Stark girls are safe she will see him again. She will return his sword and his honor, go home to Tarth, and continue to love him pitifully until her dying day. And that will be that. 

All of this would have been fine and well and would have gone perfectly to plan, she thinks, until one night when she awakens from a nightmare to find Ser Jaime in her cottage. 

The falling snow had shifted to frozen rain, causing the trees to turn into strange ice-coated sculptures, the sound of their branches scraping against one another in the wind like a knife on glass. 

In her dream she is back outside the cave, watching helplessly as Podrick and Jaime twist in the air, fighting against the ropes around their necks. Stoneheart stands below them engulfed in blue flames, laughing wildly, and Brienne can do nothing to save any of them. She cries out and suddenly the bindings holding her are instead caring arms; a warmth at her temple is a voice murmuring soothing words. 

She opens her eyes to find Jaime holding her close. He is beside her on the pallet, his chest pressed flush against her back, his hand gently smoothing her hair away from her face. He is warm and strong, the feel of him pleasantly reassuring. She relaxes into him in spite of herself. 

“Thank you,” she whispers, emotion from the dream still crackling through her voice. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

It is not a request for him to leave, but he clears his through and nods into the back of her head before beginning to pull his arm away. With a sudden boldness she covers his hand with her own to stop him. “But…will you stay? Just until I fall back asleep.”

His voice is quiet when he answers, “If you wish.” 

It is cruel, she thinks, as he settles his head behind hers again, to let herself have this when she knows it will never be real. But he is warm and solid and here. Her love threatens to spill out of her chest, filling every old wound and drowning her under its weight.

Back when they were both prisoners on the way to Harrenhal, they had been made to sleep lashed to one another on occasion. They had been forced to ride a horse astride each other’s laps. There was a time when they were, against all odds, each other’s only comfort in the world. It does not seem so strange to fall back into that.

So she closes her eyes and tries not to think too hard, counting her breaths until she is asleep once more. 

When she wakes in the morning Jaime is gone, and she attempts to ignore the empty feeling his absence leaves in her chest. She readies for the day, shoveling snow until her mind goes blank but for the weight of the shovel and the cold wind on her face. 

He is cordial that afternoon, nothing about him suggesting that anything had shifted between them. So she follows his lead and casts it out of her mind, devoting her concentration to training and nothing more. 

Besides, it is hopeless. Not worth her time to think about—it is Renly all over again. (Though nothing in her life had ever felt more right than Jaime holding her in his arms, not even the Rainbow Guard.)

But then that night there’s a knock on her door, so faint she might have imagined it, until it comes again a moment later, a little louder.

Her heart thumps wildly against her ribs and she’s sure he can hear it when she opens the door, for there is Jaime standing on her doorstep, so golden and handsome in the swirling snow. 

“I cannot sleep,” he says.

“Nor I.”

He steps inside, shaking the snow from his cloak as she closes the door behind him. “Tell me about Tarth, then.”

She does. She tells him how the water really is as blue as sapphire, how the verdant hills roll and dip and give way to soaring mountains that buffet the western straits from storms. How waterfalls spill over cliffs hundreds of feet tall, branching out into rivers and lakes that spider into the hidden valleys at the island’s center. 

She tells him about her father, how the Evenstar is taller even than she. How he let her begin to train with the sword after she kept sneaking down to the training yard to goad the boys who would laugh at her into fighting her instead. She tells him about Galladon drowning, about Alysanne and Arianne dying as babes, and she is sad but also happy to have someone to talk to about them. And when she has talked herself hoarse he lies down next to her without needing to be asked, pulling the furs over them both. 

“You’re softer than you look, you know,” he says, shifting beside her. “I shall have to make sure the realm knows. ‘Don’t be so afraid of the Maid of Tarth, she makes a fine pillow if you have a need—’”

She cuts him off with an elbow to the ribs.

“Don’t worry, your reputation is safe with me.” His laughter tickles her neck and she drifts into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love a bedsharing trope, so here we are. Just two buds sharing a bed, totally platonic, definitely not avoiding their feelings, nothing to see here. Also is it this wintery in the book timeline yet? Probably not! Do I care? Not one bit!


	9. Jaime V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He allows himself to be pulled back to her cottage by some unknown force each subsequent night—three nights he’s spent beside her, now—each time knowing it was improper, each time knowing it was against the rules the Elder Brother set forth, each time telling himself to keep his distance, and each time wholly incapable of stopping himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter are "Don't Go Looking" by Beacon, "Only" by RY X and "Cherish You" by Mikky Ekko. Find them all in [the fic playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=JbeUDPa6QUuwFpHzAbidaQ) on Spotify.

He thinks of his army, abandoned in the Riverlands, their commander missing for weeks and likely presumed dead. He thinks of his son in King’s Landing, the sweet boy sinking further each day under the weight of Cersei’s influence. Jaime’s duty calls out to him. 

But then he will catch sight of Brienne appearing over the crest of the snowy hillside, or her soft smile in response to Podrick telling a story over the evening meal, or come upon her leaning against the barn waiting for them. He will notice the way her eyes seem so impossibly blue against the snow, and it will take him a moment to remember how to breathe, his thoughts of duty completely forgotten.

He heard her cry out his name in anguish from where she slept in the next cottage over, some mad impulse driving him out of his own bed and into hers, rules be damned. No one would be checking on them with the storm raging outside. So he held her that night and coaxed her out of her nightmare, as he’d often wished someone would have done for him those first few years after Aerys. And that was to be it. 

But she was soft. She was warm. She smelled of fire and earth and faintly of soap, and when she asked him to say he held her closer and let himself breathe her in.

He allows himself to be pulled back to her cottage by some unknown force each subsequent night—three nights he’s spent beside her, now—each time knowing it was improper, each time knowing it was against the rules the Elder Brother set forth, each time telling himself to keep his distance, and each time wholly incapable of stopping himself. She is familiar to him in a way he scarcely understands. He was wrong to kiss her after Stoneheart, but is it wrong for them to draw comfort from each other each night? He cannot say. 

For her part, Brienne has not asked him to leave and seems comforted by his presence, so it’s not that he is necessarily _planning_ on returning to her again that night, it’s more that he simply knows he will. 

Though that was before the Elder Brother asks to speak with him.

That evening at dinner Jaime sits across from Brienne, watching her openly as they eat. If she notices his stares she makes no mention of it, nor does she shy away from his gaze. At one point she looks up from her trencher, meeting his eyes with a softness that emanates from her like the glow of a moonbeam. 

Once the meal is finished they all make to leave the table. He wants to say something to her, though he does not know what. He wants to kiss her again.

Luckily, or perhaps not, the Elder Brother approaches at the precise moment the thought dances across his mind.

“Well, it seems your little group will soon be taking its leave of us,” he says warmly. “Conditions will be well enough for our ferry to bring you ashore on the morrow. I am sure you are all eager to be on your way.”

The news is like a punch in the gut. Hunt nods a little too enthusiastically for Jaime’s liking. 

“Thank you, for your kind hospitality,” Brienne replies earnestly. “I wish there was some way we could express out gratitude, for sheltering us for so long.”

The Elder Brother smiles sadly. “I would only ask that you stay out of harm’s way, though I know that’s not a promise you will find easy to keep.” He pats Brienne on the shoulder as she turns to follow Hunt and Podrick out of the hall. 

Jaime moves to follow as well, but finds his way blocked by the Elder Brother. 

“I was happy to see you sparring with Lady Brienne earlier. I admit it has been some time since I last lifted a sword, I had forgotten it could be about more than death and dying,” the man says. 

“Though that often seems to come with,” Jaime responds.

“It does, it does,” the Elder Brother says sadly. “I was hoping we could speak, before you leave.”

“We are speaking now.”

The Elder Brother smiles. “Aye, we are, though I had hoped for something more private.”

_Does he know?_ “I am not in the habit of making confession.”

“And I am no septon, just a man who craves conversation on and island full of silent brothers. Consider this a way to pay your debt to us, so to speak.”

And that is how Jaime finds himself knocking on a wooden door in the side of a hill later that evening, wondering if anything good can come of entering yet another cave. 

“Ser Jaime, I am glad you came. Please, take a seat.” The Elder Brother ushers him inside to a space much cozier than he could have anticipated. 

After pouring him a cup of the isle’s mead, the man sits across from him. Jaime feels uncomfortable, as though he is being studied. He has the distinct impression he’s about to be reprimanded as one would a green squire.

“Well, let us see. Kingslaying, incest, treason…yes, tales of your exploits have reached us even here, Ser Jaime.”

So, not the topic he was prepared for, then. “I did not come here to be insulted.” He can feel the anger rising inside him.

“Oh, I mean no insult by it. Only to lay the truth out before us, so we can speak as men. Do you deny any of it?”

Jaime sighs, thinking of Aerys’ blood on the throne room floor, thinking of his sister’s naked body under his, their children sitting on a throne that is not theirs to claim. “I don’t.”

“Good. Then let us speak of love.” 

“Love?” Jaime is caught off guard. “What does a brother of the faith know of love?”

“In this brutal world love is like a rare gem, precious if found.” The Elder Brother smiles, unoffended. “I wasn’t always a servant of the Seven.”

“I’ve done terrible things in the name of love,” Jaime finds himself saying. 

“As have many before you. Robert and Rhaegar tore apart a kingdom in the name of love.”

“I tried to kill a boy of seven, but I crippled him instead.” He had never allowed himself to feel shame over Bran Stark, but the warmth of the mead and the soft tones of the Elder Brother are weakening the walls he had built inside himself. 

“And do you feel remorse?”

He takes a long moment before answering. “No. The boy found out about Cersei and me. If he had told anyone Robert would have killed us, the children too. I was protecting my family.” He pauses, taking another sip of mead. “And yes. Cersei and I should have never been together. It was not the boy’s fault he found us committing treason.”

The Elder Brother watches Jaime closely, but does not speak. “Everything that has led me to this point has been for Cersei. I joined the Kingsguard for her, gave up my birthright, so we could be together. But it has all turned to ashes. Our bastard sits the Iron Throne, another dead, another maimed. Their lives in danger if I ever claim them as my own. And Cersei…I fear she has turned mad in her desire for power. All I ever wanted was her, but all she ever wanted was the throne. I do not think I can call that love any longer.”

His voice is thick by the end, his eyes strangely damp when he realizes the truth behind his words. 

“Is that what you think? That every choice you have made was because of the love you hold for your sister?”

“I know it is.”

“I have heard a tale of a man protecting a woman’s virtue, even when that man was maimed and near death. Even when he had no reason to protect her. I have also heard that same man later jumped into a bear pit to rescue an unarmed maiden, though he himself had no weapon. I heard that man, though he did not have to, later armed and armored this warrior maiden, to keep an oath sworn to a dead woman. And he again followed her into danger, knowing the odds were against them. That sounds to me like a man who is making his own choices. _Good_ choices.

“The love you had for your sister, it was twisted and controlling, yes. But love, real love, must be cherished when found,” the Elder Brother continues gently. “Real love does not ask anything of you. Real love makes you better, and makes you want to keep being better. It can make a man who thought he lost the best part of himself find a new way to live. It can make a broken man whole again. The songs would have us believe great love requires a great story, like Jonquil and her Florian. Though it may also be as simple as a woman keeping vigil at the bedside of a wounded man.”

He stares hard at the Elder Brother, letting his words take root. “I swore a holy vow.”

“A vow you have broken before.”

“You would ask me to break it again?”

“Our purpose in this life is love, even the Seven would not begrudge you that. So I would only ask you to embrace happiness and try to do good in the world, Jaime Lannister, in whatever way you can.”

—

Jaime finds he is still disoriented from his conversation with the Elder Brother as their group and horses enough for all gather on the dock the next morning. He did not go to Brienne’s cottage after, the sudden realization regarding the truth of his feelings overwhelming him to the point of not being able to see her right away, for he does not know what to do with this revelation. She looks at him quizzically now and he looks back to the island, unsure how to answer the question in her eyes.

The wind is biting but the skies are clear and blue as the brothers ferry them to the south shore of the Trident, the imposing figure of Sandor Clegane watching silently from the dock as they float away. 

Jaime adjusts the cuff of his sleeve where it’s tied over his stump once docked, having fallen out of the habit of wearing the gold hand whilst on the isle. Observing the world for the first time in weeks without snow blowing in his face, he can now appreciate the beauty of the frozen landscape before them. It is like a world transformed, with everything before them somehow devoid of color but for the snow coating every branch, shrub, and the ground beneath. Even the Trident rushes by a steely grey. Their horses pick their way through the snow slowly, each step crunching under their hooves. 

Once night falls they make camp tucked far into the woods in an old stone shack. From its state of disrepair it seems to have been abandoned long before the War of the Five Kings. Most of the roof is gone, more sky than slate visible through the rafters. The door hangs off its hinges, but the walls of the structure’s lone room are sturdy, and with a fire in the hearth they’ll be protected from the worst of the chill. 

Hunt agrees to take first watch, though grumbling about how cold it is outside. Jaime hopes that if Podrick falls asleep quickly he’ll be able to speak with Brienne. His conversation with the Elder Brother is still rattling around in his head, steadily forming into a clearer picture in his mind. But to his dismay she places her bedroll on the other side of the room and is asleep almost instantly. 

He dozes fitfully, eventually waking sometime in the middle of the night. He watches the fire crackle and pop nearby, losing himself once again to his thoughts. He had slept beside her for nights on end, somehow not thinking _this is love, she loves me and I love her,_ but that’s what this thing between them is, isn’t it?

He had never known what it was to fall in love. Loving Cersei had not been a conscious thought, it had simply always been—there was no need to question the when or why. The feeling of falling in love with another was so inconceivable, so foreign, he didn’t even realize what was happening until Brienne had firmly rooted herself inside the very core of him, her name whispering its way deep into his soul. 

When had he first loved her, he wondered? Was it the clench in his gut when she appeared at Pennytree, wounded but still so determined? Was it in the way she looked at him full of trust and determination when he sent her on her quest, naming her sword Oathkeeper? Was it in the hurt in her eyes as he had her taken to a tower cell to appease Loras Tyrell? Or perhaps it was in the relief that washed over him like a wave as they rode from the bear pit. Certainly his body had responded in the baths in Harrenhal, but at the time he had chalked that up to delirium. No, he conceded, it was even before that. In the tender way she had cleaned the sick out of his beard and the soil from his legs those nights with the Bloody Mummers, when by all rights she should have hated him. It was in the way their swords sang together, back when he was still whole. It may have even been in the awe he had not meant to feel, as he watched her drop that boulder on Ryger’s ship. It feels so strange for his heart to betray him so, to not realize how deeply he had fallen until it was too late to turn back.

It has taken a lifetime, yes, but he can see now how his sweet sister had manipulated his love. How she twisted his devotion to her dark whims. She doesn’t love him, she loves what she could make him do for her. He was her other half, the half that can do things a woman cannot. She never loved him, not truly, she simply wanted to be him. She used him as a means to an end. He had tried his whole life to be exactly what she wanted, and somehow he was never quite enough—she always needed more from him. He gave up his future so he could stay beside her always, and still she discarded him when he did not bow to her every whim. In her quest for power the veil of her love had fallen and now he can see her clearly. He remembers the way the wildfire reflected in her eyes as she burned the Tower of the Hand, so like Aerys he had to stop himself from physically recoiling. How she called him back to King’s Landing to die for her—to die with her. 

Cersei had blinded him with her beauty and manipulation, as she’d done with so many others. But it does not matter that Brienne isn’t beautiful, in a certain light or otherwise. She is fierce, and strong, and caring. She is honorable. Jaime thinks that may matter more than all the beauty in the world. He has grown to love her horsey teeth, the dent in her nose where it had broken once, the freckles covering her face and speckled across every limb like spattered paint. And her eyes, clear and blue and astonishing; he loves her eyes, even when she is so often using them to look at him mulishly. 

In another day or so they will catch up to his army and he will rejoin the Lannister forces, and she will be gone. He will let her go, his stubborn wench, to continue her quest—_their_ quest—and she will probably die for it and he’ll never see her again. The thought makes him sick.

He is consumed by the way he is drawn to her now, his desire to look upon her. To see her face, so different from his twin’s in every way. He wants to be greedy, to drink her in while he still can. He rolls over, searching out her bedroll in the dark, but she’s not there. Hunt’s back from his watch, asleep beside Podrick, and he realizes she must have taken up her turn. She’ll be just outside the door, alone in the dark night. Before he can think better of it, he slips quietly from his bedroll to join her. The door creaks when he opens it and she looks up at him from where she’s seated beside a small fire. She sits on a blanket against the wall of the hut, silent tears cutting wet tracks down her face and glinting crystalline in the moonlight. A crow _quorks_ at him placidly from high above and he realizes with a start that it was her eyes he fell in love with first, the very first time they fell upon him in revulsion in that dungeon in Riverrun. 

“It’s not your watch yet,” she whispers.

An overwhelming feeling of tenderness washes over him. 

Without thinking, he sinks to the ground beside her and reaches his only hand out to brush the tears from her unravaged cheek. She does not flinch. 

“I couldn’t sleep without you beside me,” he whispers back. Then, “I should like to kiss you again.”

She sighs and closes her eyes, leaning her head into his hand and oh, he really does love her, doesn’t he?

“You said it was a mistake,” she breathes.

“I lied.” 

He knows this is not the right moment, here on the cold ground outside this abandoned hut, he really does, but he cannot help himself. He’s wasted too much time not loving her. The tears are still wet on her face, so he gently leans over to kiss the cheek he just caressed. She opens her eyes but he does not see anger there, he does not see revulsion, he sees sapphires blazing with a question, so he shifts and brushes his lips beside the fresh scarring on her other cheek. He kisses the dented bridge of her nose, the corner of her eye, the line of her jaw, and when he tentatively presses his lips to hers she kisses him back without hesitation. 

Her hand is gripping his bicep to pull him closer so he kisses her deeper, sinking into the feel of her, remembering the first time he kissed her before they were interrupted by the twang of a crossbow. 

She feels so good, and he doesn’t know how he could miss something he’d had so briefly, but he does. He wants her. No, he needs her. 

They must be quiet, so quiet, because Hunt and Podrick are asleep with only a ramshackle stone wall and rotted door between them, and it would not do to be interrupted, not now, not when it’s taken them so long to get here. She sends a worried glance towards the door, but there is no movement inside. He takes this opportunity to press hot kisses down her neck, clumsily unlacing first her jerkin and then her tunic as he goes. When she does not stop him he exposes the small swell of her breast, freckled like the rest of her, before sliding his hand across her ribcage to fit it into his hand. He finds her mouth again with his as she arches against his touch. He smiles into her, prideful of the blush creeping across her chest as he presses her back into the earth, her cloak fanning out beneath them. 

He kisses her for what seems like a lifetime. She opens her mouth to his, her fingers finding their way under his shirt and onto his skin. He is aching for her now, knows she can feel where the hardness of him is pressed against her thigh, yet she does not falter.

The well-earned muscle of her stomach is taut under his hand as he reaches further, beginning the work of unlacing her breeches. Her breath hitches against his lips and he holds the laces loosely, his hand pressed between their bodies. Searching her eyes, waiting for an answer to his unspoken question. She strokes the back of her fingers across his jaw, biting her lip before nodding once, twice, and he can’t help but take her mouth with his again, to bite that lip too. 

And then her laces are undone and his palm is upon her, a finger dipping slowly into the heat of her, then two, and she gasps below him. A sound he never thought he would hear in his life, now the sweetest sound he’s ever heard. When she rolls her hips to the rhythm of his fingers he wonders if she’s ever touched herself there, thinking of him. The thought makes him dizzy.

Her hands, which until this point had been under his shirt and trailing the length of his back, are suddenly gone. Before is able to mourn their abrupt disappearance he feels her working at the buttons of his own trousers. He has just enough time to register the determination on her face before she slips a hand over him, stifling his groan by arching her face up to kiss him again. 

He thinks fleetingly of the dishonor he’s bringing to her. She should be made love to as a new bride on a feather bed, not by the Kingslayer on the frozen ground of the godsforsaken Riverlands, but he can’t imagine going another day of his life not knowing her in this way. They could have died in that cave, he could’ve died on the isle…they could die on the morrow, and he does not want to die without _this_.

Her hands are gone again, but only so she can slide her breeches and smallclothes down and off in one motion, before returning to firmly grip his waist, decision in her eyes. His fingers leave her warmth, watching as she does this, in awe of her. He thinks he can heart her heart beating, fluttering like a trapped bird inside her chest. He wonders if she can hear is, thumping in time to hers. He wants so say something—what had he told Peck? _Sweet words, gentle touches,_ but they can’t risk being heard. Under him in the moonlight her large lips are swollen from his kisses and her cheeks are flushed pink despite the cold. He had never thought he would see desire so plainly written across her features, but there it is.

When she gently squeezes his hips he guides himself in, and she whimpers below him before her breath hitches, the tips of her fingers briefly digging into his flesh. He pauses, letting her adjust to the feel of him. The newness. And this is new for him, too. 

He sinks the rest of the way when he feels her relax beneath him and begins moving slowly, agonizingly slowly. _Do not rush this. I want to remember this, every detail._ The way her arms hook under his and wrap across his shoulders, the muscles of her long legs hitching against his own. Her short breaths quickening against his temple with each languid stroke from him. The pulsing warmth of being inside her. The feeling of engulfing her and being engulfed by her, all at once. Because even though he wants to do this, just this, every day, for the rest of his life, in another day’s time he’ll be back with his army and she’ll be headed gods know where, and he needs this memory tattooed on his soul. 

Despite the slow pace he’s set he finds himself approaching the edge all too soon. He reaches down again between their joined bodies to bring her over with him, his sword-calloused thumb caressing a pattern that causes her to momentarily lose her breath and wrap her legs higher about him. 

Before long she is gone first with a shudder, clenching around the length of him, a quiet moan escaping her lips where they rest against his forehead. He grunts into the nearly-faded bruise on her neck, thrusting once, twice more before collapsing on top of her, unable to tell where his body ends and hers begins. 

They stay like that for some time, boneless and spent, each unwilling to let the other go. Eventually, he moves just enough to draw himself out, to help pull her breeches back up to guard against the frigid air. When she is more or less clothed again, he grasps her face and kisses her hard, trying to say it all without words—for what words could possibly be enough to encompass what he feels?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think of the Elder Brother as a Westerosi therapist, just dropping truth bombs on everybody.
> 
> Also hello, welcome to the first time I’ve ever attempted writing smut. I left the rating at M because I’m not really sure this warrants an E rating, but if you think I should change it please let me know! Like I said this is a first. I don’t know what I’m doing with any part of this chapter so just toot toot all aboard the crazy train hope you enjoyed the ride.


	10. Brienne V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Small moments glance unbidden across her mind each time she closes her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH for all your wonderful comments on the last chapter. I was so nervous about posting it and I am so pleased you enjoyed it! I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much ;)
> 
> Songs for this chapter are "Burning" by Maggie Rogers, "I Do" by Susie Suh and "Won't Let You" by MorMor and have been added to [the playlist on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=UM1b9tf7Q6a3XRNYzx_H3w).

Small moments glance unbidden across her mind each time she closes her eyes. Her tunic falling open under his hand. The feel of his mouth on her bare skin. Gooseflesh rising all across her body, from the cold and then from his palm on her breast. His eyes, dark with want when she nodded up at him. What felt like a thousand sparks dancing across her body when his hand slipped inside her breeches, his steady gaze the only thing holding her together. The hitch in her breath when his body finally joined with hers, the utterly singular feeling of him filling her up. His body moving above her, the warmth of his skin under her exploring fingers, his hot breath on her neck. The fire building in her center as he drove them closer and closer towards a precipice. The world of unspoken emotion in his kiss after, and the way she held him until the sun rose and their companions stirred. 

“Ser? My lady?”

Podrick’s voice snaps her back to the present, where she finds she’s unwittingly steered her horse off the rutted path they’ve been following. Clearing her throat she gives a quick tug on the reigns to rejoin them. Jaime catches her eye, ducking his head knowingly, and she swears he’s blushing. 

She thought after his regret for the kiss that things were settled between them—she dared not broach the subject again, for what would she say? She could not have told him then that she loves him, for how many times has she been told no man could want her, _desire_ her, a great ugly beast of a woman? Least of all Jaime Lannister. So instead she said nothing at all, yet still he came to her hut in the night and they spoke as friends. He slept beside her to quell the nightmares, so they could draw some comfort from one another, and she had convinced herself there would be nothing more. 

But then he did not come to her their last night on the isle, and when they left something was different in his eyes. Her heart ached and she wept over their imminent parting, with what felt like only mere moments left to them. So when he came to her on her watch and kissed her again she wanted more—so she gave her maidenhead willingly, taking whatever he had to offer in return. _He is not mine,_ she thinks. _But I am his._

When he found her outside he looked at her with a tenderness she had never expected. She is surprised at how unguarded he had been, and surprised at herself for allowing him in. 

Inside her. The fresh memory brings a sudden flush of warmth between her legs.

She cannot say what possessed him to do what he did—she doesn’t want to think too hard on it, the impossibility of it. She knows what his twin means to him—the licentiousness of their relationship, her captivating beauty, his devotion to her—and wonders if maybe he has simply been away from her too long. That perhaps last night was just a matter of convenience for him. But it is some consolation that no matter his intentions, no matter if she never knows another man again, that at least she has known _him._

A boldness overtook her, a thing she had not thought herself capable of. Never had she thought the first man she’d let into her bed would be one she actually wanted. She will allow herself this small victory, knowing that if she must someday endure a bedding in a loveless marriage, that she has at least known what it was to be had by a man she desired. A man she trusts fully. Someone who doesn’t want her for her title, or her lands. Someone who’s not trying to win a bet. A man she loves.

“Does the morning find you well, my lady?” Jaime falls in beside her, his voice dropping to an undertone. “I hope you are not in any pain?”

“I am well—just a little tired.” She wants to be embarrassed, but when she looks at him he is as golden and handsome as ever and she can’t help but share a secret smile with him.

Glancing ahead to make sure Ser Hyle and Podrick are otherwise occupied, Jaime reaches for one of her gloved hands where they rest on her reigns. Bringing it to him, he brushes a kiss across her knuckles. “We will speak more later,” his lips tickle her hand as he says it. He quickly lets go and trots ahead, leaving her mind to race once more.

—

That afternoon they come upon a small village. Jaime suggests they spend the night at the inn, even though they likely would have been able to make it to Pennytree had they pushed their horses into the evening. Brienne wonders if perhaps he is not as eager to return to his army as he could be. She tries to dampen down the hope that sparks inside her at the thought.

She wants to talk to Jaime about last night, but it feels as if there is has been some spell between them all day and she doesn’t want to break it. Instead, she sees to the horses with Ser Hyle while Jaime and Podrick disappear inside to arrange for rooms. By the time she and Hyle enter the dusty inn, Podrick is tucking into a bowl of stew and Jaime is nowhere to be found.

“Ser Jaime said he would be back soon, he has business to attend to in the village,” Podrick says when she sits beside him, keeping his voice low to avoid being overheard by the other patrons.

“What business could he possibly have _here_?” Ser Hyle asks the question Brienne is thinking.

Podrick shrugs. “He was asking the innkeep about a maester. I thought mayhap his wound was bothering him.”

Brienne frowns. His shoulder had healed well, she had run her fingers over the new scar the night before. His skin had been warm and soft, his muscles twitching under her exploring fingers while his tongue slid against hers, her naked chest pressing against the rough wool of his tunic, heat pulsing between her thighs—

“—Brienne?” Ser Hyle is looking at her expectantly, his eyes flicking down to the bowl that had just been placed on the table before her.

She coughs, pressing her knees together before lifting a spoonful of the thin stew to her mouth.

“Are you well?” Hyle looks more suspicious than he does concerned. 

“He shouldn’t have gone off on his own, it’s not safe,” she mumbles.

He rolls his eyes but blessedly says nothing more on the subject. 

Jaime does not return until well after they’ve finished their meals, while Hyle’s coaxing Podrick to try some ale despite Brienne’s reproachful look. He arrives with two linen-wrapped bundles tucked under one arm and a smug look on his face. Her heart flutters like some silly maiden when he catches her eye. _Not a maiden anymore,_ she thinks.

“You’ve been busy,” Ser Hyle raises an eyebrow as Jaime joins them. 

“Yes, well, one must keep the local economy going in times of strife,” Jaime replies, sitting on the bench beside Brienne and motioning to the innkeep for a bowl of stew. He stretches his legs out under the table, lithe as a cat, and just looking at him stirs that heat between her legs anew. 

“It has been a long day, I think I shall retire to bed,” she says suddenly, standing so quickly she almost knocks her head on the low beam over their table. “Podrick, you’ll be sharing with me?”

“Oh, I have no mind of sharing with the sers,” Podrick grins at her as if sharing a secret. “You should take the other room for yourself.”

Brienne feels an odd sting of jealousy at that, wondering if the boy had bonded with Ser Hyle during their captivity with the Brotherhood and their time rooming together on the isle. She wonders if he would prefer to squire for him now, instead. _Perhaps he would be better off,_ she thinks sadly. _After all, I will never be able to knight him myself._

It’s in this somewhat sour mood that she retires to her room. A fire has already been started in the small hearth, comfortably warming the small space. After discarding her saddle bags she sits on the bed to remove her boots. It is surprisingly inviting, adorned with blankets and even a lone fur. After sleeping for weeks on the small pallet in her hut on the Quiet Isle, and on the hard earth before that, it would be a welcome comfort. _Though,_ she thinks, _I would trade all the cozy beds in the world for another night in the cold with Jaime._

Shaking the thought from her mind she crosses the room to wash her face, having spotted a small basin sitting atop a rough-hewn table, tendrils of steam spiraling lazily from it. A soft knock on the door stops her in her tracks. 

Heart pounding fiercely, she unlatches it to find Jaime standing in the dim light of the hallway, still clutching his mysterious parcels under one arm.

“My lady.” 

His grin sends a warm shiver through her body.

“Where did you go, earlier?”

He tilts his head, brow knitting in amusement. “Were you _worried_?”

She rolls her eyes. “Of course I was worried, you have an extensive history of coming across people who want you _dead._”

“Forgive me, I was merely looking for some things that might help on the rest of your journey to find the Stark girls,” he chuckles.

“Podrick said you were looking for a maester?”

He coughs, taking a small wineskin out from under his cloak and holding it out to her.

“It’s moon tea,” he murmurs sheepishly. “I did not think you would know how to brew it yourself…but that you might want it, after…”

Her face is surely a deeper shade of red than even the crimson of his house colors as she takes the skin from him. She had not even thought of it, but of course he’s right. Even through her embarrassment she thinks the gesture is a thoughtful one—if unexpected to the point of mortification.

He quickly shoves the largest parcel into her arms as well. “And this.”

She folds back the linen to reveal a thick fur-lined cloak, far warmer than the one she wears now and much better suited to the weather she will face in the Vale.

He taps the remaining parcel under his arm. “There’s one for your squire, too. No shortage of wolf pelts in the Riverlands these days.”

“Jaime—” The blush is fading from her cheeks but he has her at a loss for words. 

She does not know what to make of him. 

The little smiles throughout the day, the kissing of her hand, and now the gifts—it is all too much. She knows he can’t possibly feel the way she does, so why act thus? She wishes he would not be so kind to her, for she can’t help but want to fall back into his arms. She knows she is in danger of falling even more in love with him with every passing moment, and to part with him come morning will surely break her heart. 

“Ser, I thank you. And…and I thank you for last night. It is a memory I will carry with me always. But you do not…you do not have to pretend for my sake.” She moves to close the door, but he gently grabs her arm and she forces herself to look at him.

“_Pretend?_” His voice drops to a growl. “Pray tell, what am I _pretending_ at?”

“I am well aware that men have…have _needs,_ and I admit I was more than willing. I wanted to. With you.” She silently begs the blush rising back up her neck to retreat. 

“You can’t honestly think—” he sputters, eyes narrowing. “Well, I can see that I have not been clear enough in my intentions. Last night was not about _convenience_. Brienne, I am _in love_ with you.”

Time seems to stop. She is vaguely aware of of the din of the common room downstairs, suddenly sounding muffled to her ears. Her limbs feel numb; her breath is caught in her chest. 

“You speak of love?” Her voice sounds small to her ears when she manages to find it again. 

“I would be honest with you, I did not think I could ever love any woman but Cersei, that I was not capable of honest and true love,” Jaime reaches his hand forward to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear, a reassuring smile in his eyes. “So then imagine my surprise when I found that I am impossibly, hopelessly, _irrevocably_ in love with this warrior woman, the most honorable person in Westeros, who has saved me in more ways than she could ever know—who could kill me with her bare hands should I ever deserve it—when it was already too late to turn back. My lady, there is no hope of my _not_ loving you.”

She had been content to have just that one night, not expecting any more from him. She lied to herself that it would be enough. But her love reciprocated? She hadn’t dared to hope.

She knows she will never be a beauty, but he looks at her then as though she is, his face bright and his eyes warm, seeming to see all of her. A look she realizes he saves just for her.

She can’t remember how to speak, so she kisses him instead.

She lets him back her into the room, the wineskin and parcels falling to the floor. Letting him overtake her she rakes her fingers through his hair, fervently matching his kisses as he presses the length of his body against hers—even the weight of him against her feels right.

Jaime kisses her with such ardor that she doesn’t have time to feel embarrassed or ungainly or ugly. He knows what she looks like, he knows who she is—perhaps better than anybody—and he loves her all the same. _He loves me._

_He loves_ me.

He spins her around to press her back against the door as soon as it latches behind them, his mouth hungrily meeting hers again. 

Knowing now what she wants and what he is willing to give, her hands find their way to the straps down the front of his leather doublet. She begins unbuckling them, desperate to feel his skin again, but soon has to pull away to see see what she’s doing. He rests his forehead against hers, his hand and stump framing her where they’re pressed against the door. 

He breathes impatiently into the space between them while she rushes to undo the last buckle. When she finally pushes the garment off his shoulders he surges forward to meet her lips again before it even hits the ground. 

She drags her fingers down his back, tugging the hem of his shirt loose and pulling it over his head. Suddenly presented with his bare skin she cannot stop touching him—caressing his shoulders, the small of his back, pulling him closer by his hips, pressing her palms flat against his chest, lacing her arms around his neck—reveling in the intimacy of his powerful body under her hands. 

He has bruises and scrapes to match her own from sparring on the isle, and older scars she wants to know the stories behind. He’s working at the laces of her breeches as she places a hot kiss upon the fresh scar on his shoulder, remembering the shock on his face when he was hit, the fear she tried to hide on their journey to the isle with Jaime lying unconscious in her arms. 

She lets desire take over, losing herself to sensation. She wants to kiss his neck and so she does, feeling his pulse thrum under her tongue, while he helps her step out of her breeches and smallclothes. He finds her mouth again before sliding a knee between her legs and she gasps, thighs parting for him. 

His every touch sets her skin alight as he runs his hand over her hip, sweeping up under her tunic to her waist, her breasts. When he brushes his thumb over a nipple she moans into his mouth involuntarily. She feels him smile into her as he lets out a self-satisfied little hum. Clearly enjoying her encouragement as he teases it between his fingers, before sliding his hand down her backside to grip the back of her thigh. He coaxes her legs further open before reversing the direction of his trailing fingers, running them up the inside of her leg, curling them into the wet heat between her thighs.

Overwhelmed, she holds his face in her hands. “_Jaime,_” her voice is a moan against his mouth, so full of want it sounds foreign to her ears.

“Tell me what you want, Brienne.” His words come in a ragged breath, filling the space between them. 

_What do I want?_ She hardly knows how to answer—no one’s ever asked. “You,” she sighs simply. “_You._”

At that his hand leaves her to push his own breeches down, leaving them to pool at his boots before he slips his stump under her leg and lifts it to hitch around his hip.

She thought they would move to the bed and for a brief, sickening moment all her insecurities rush back to her—she is too large, too much, not delicate enough for him to be able to support her weight like this. But he can, he hoists her easily against him, and the door is sturdy behind her. She instinctively cants her hips towards his own just before he pushes into her in one long stroke. 

He stifles his groan with a bruising kiss to her lips, taking her bottom lip between his teeth before pressing his forehead against hers, holding her there. He begins to roll his hips slowly, then again and again, and she curls her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, curls her toes where they drape across his hip, curls one clutching hand around his waist—unable to get him close enough as he moves inside her, wanting every inch of him to fit against every inch of her. 

The back of her head knocks against the rough wood of the door as Jaime drives into her but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t _care_, she doesn’t even feel it, she only feels _him_.

His breath quickens as his thrusts become erratic, a strangled grunt escaping his throat as he slips out of her and spills himself on her thigh. Once he stills he finds her lips again with a kiss that takes her breath. She slips her leg from where it rests around him, standing on shaky legs inside his embrace, surprised by the sudden loss of him. Before she can think too hard on it he slides both arms to her back, pulling her away from the door to walk her the few paces to the bed behind him. 

He seats her at the foot of the bed, wiping her leg clean with a corner of the blanket before bending down to swiftly remove his boots and breeches. She looks at him questioningly while he urges her arms up to pull her tunic over her head, bending down to kiss her after. 

“What are you doing?” she exhales between kisses. 

“Lie back,” he murmurs against her mouth.

She does as he bids and his lips trace a slow trail from her neck to her navel, causing her to shudder. When he kneels between her legs, dragging her thighs over his shoulders, she feels exposed. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, halfway to covering her chest when his mouth suddenly presses against her _there_ and her fists fly out to clutch the blankets instead.

Her mouth falls open in a gasp and she can’t help but press herself into him, eyes fluttering closed and her back arching off the bed while his tongue sets to work. She writhes under the machinations of his mouth—it is too much, she’s coming apart at the seams, she’s whimpering under his every stroke. When she feels his fingers slip back into her to stroke her in concert with his tongue, it takes only moments before her vision erupts in a burst of white and she cries out with a more girlish noise than she would have ever thought herself capable of. 

She can’t move as the waves of pleasure coursing through her slowly subside, vaguely aware of Jaime’s face still between her thighs, of her bare chest heaving for air, the film of sweat on her freckled skin shining in the flicker of the firelight. Jaime nuzzles the skin inside her thigh, gently kissing her there before stretching out beside her.

She can’t seem to form coherent thoughts yet, so she simply stares at him with heavy eyes. He reaches out to touch her face but it’s the wrong arm, his stump brushing across her ruined cheek instead. He tries to pull it away but she grabs hold of it, holding his arm to her. She thinks he must be ashamed of it, but she remembers. She remembers it happening, the long days and nights that followed where she feared he would die, the sounds of him in anguish still the worst thing she’s ever heard.

“All my life I have been told that no man would love me,” she murmurs once her thoughts become comprehensible again. “I never thought I would hear the words, nor have cause to say them back. But I do love you, Jaime. I think I have loved you a great while.”

The smile that breaks across his face is like something out of a song, his eyes crinkling and incandescent with the most honest joy she’s ever seen on him. It is almost too much, her chest constricting under the weight of all the love she bears for him, the weight of knowing they may never see each other again after they part on the morrow. 

So she draws him nearer, pulling the blankets up around them for warmth. They fall asleep that night as they had on the isle, his arms around her holding her close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon is that Pod is way more observant/perceptive than anyone gives him credit for (I mean, he saves Tyrion during the Battle of Blackwater, he somehow figures out that it’s Brienne he needs to follow out of King’s Landing…) so he absolutely figures out what happened between Jaime and Brienne and definitely orchestrates the room situation to try to get them alone. He just wants his mom to be happy bless him :’)


	11. Jaime VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the grey pre-dawn light Jaime wakes only to drown again in her eyes, finding Brienne already awake and gazing at him softly across the pillow. There is a world of emotion in those eyes—a new heat in the dark of her pupil where he sees her desire for him, and a sadness in the blue, for their imminent parting is too close for either of them to not feel it now. And beneath all that, the sparkle of her unguarded love for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Songs for this chapter](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=x9v1pVCERfebcBR8TASMFw) are "Hot Tears" by Leif Vollebekk and "Lose You" by Noah Gundersen.

In the grey pre-dawn light Jaime wakes only to drown again in her eyes, finding Brienne already awake and gazing at him softly across the pillow. There is a world of emotion in those eyes—a new heat in the dark of her pupil where he sees her desire for him, and a sadness in the blue, for their imminent parting is too close for either of them to not feel it now. And beneath all that, the sparkle of her unguarded love for him. 

So they come together again, unwilling for any time to have been their last.

He leaves a trail of kisses across her body, trying and failing to count all her freckles in the dim light, cherishing the way his touch sends a shiver through her. He eventually finds his way back to her mouth, his hand splayed across the side of her face while he kisses her long and deep. 

“I should like to never leave his bed,” he sighs against her lips. She nods, pulling him closer as she hitches a leg over his own. 

“So come _here_,” she murmurs, surprisingly bold.

When he presses into her he wonders if he’ll ever get over just how perfect they fit together, before remembering in a rush of sorrow how their remaining time is finite. He can sense her desperation, too. Her hands slide down his back, gripping him low, pressing him deeper with each thrust of his hips until she shatters around him.

After, he lies beside her, trailing his fingers up and down her arm while marveling at the softness of the skin there—such a contrast to the hard face she puts out to the world. The sun is just beginning to break over the horizon beyond their window, a golden glow settling into the room that belies the cold that will surely greet them outside. 

Brienne has the blankets pulled up practically to her chin, an absurd modesty befalling her in the fresh dawn. He tugs playfully where she holds them in place with her hand. “None of this, I want to see you. I want to burn you into my mind so that I may warm myself with the memory all winter.”

She shies away. “Jaime, I know I am not much to look upon…”

“You are a _wonder_, Brienne, please forgive me for ever saying otherwise.”

She blushes deeply, but releases her grip on the bedcovers. 

He’s never woken up beside a lover—only sharing brief moments with Cersei in dark corners or having to creep away from her in the dead of night—this is a new kind of intimacy for him. He wants to cherish this moment. Their last.

He’d seen her in the baths at Harrenhal but this is the first time he’s seen her like this in the light of day, her skin soft and pale as cream between her many freckles. Small patches are mottled here and there with bruises from their sparring on the isle, and he takes care to press soft kisses against each one. There are the scars he remembers her getting, the small white puckers on her back and leg from where the arrows hit her when Cleos perished, the slashes across her left arm from the bear. Then there are the fresher marks from their time apart—though none as severe as the wound to her cheek—all telling a story in shades of purple and pink. 

_How did I ever think her ugly?_ She is a sight to behold, sinewed and strong. Powerful. He has a new appreciation for her muscles after feeling them hold him to her, feeling them move and jump beneath his touch. Her legs go on for leagues, and as he contemplates them his fingers ghost over the scar on her thigh from their fight just before the Bloody Mummers found them. It feels like a lifetime ago.

The hair falling across her face is pale and limp and thoroughly mussed, catching the morning light in a way that makes it almost white. Her lips are swollen and red from his kisses and the scratch of his beard, standing out stark against her skin. He knows no one has ever called her a beauty, but then again no one has ever seen her like this. To him there is a kind of magic to her. 

She reaches a hand out to his empty wrist and he again fights the instinct to draw away from her touch, forcing himself to lie still.

“Does it still hurt?” she asks.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it feels like my hand’s still there, I can feel the muscles twitch and I forget, until I look down and there’s nothing.”

It strikes him then that she is the only person who never thought less of him after the loss of his hand. She is the only one who thought he could be more than his sword hand, the only one who believed in his honor. And when she sparred with him on the Quiet Isle there was no pity in her eyes, no joy in beating him, only determination to help him improve.

“I shall miss sparring with you, no one pushes me as you do. I am loathe to go back to practicing with Ilyn Payne—he’s a decent swordsman but I must admit the silence can be unsettling.”

Her brow furrows. “You think too much and second-guess yourself when sparring, but you were better than you had any right to be against the Brotherhood. How can that be?” 

“All the moves were suddenly much clearer in that cave when my losing meant your dying.”

She closes her eyes, brow wrinkling further. He knows what she’s thinking, her lingering regret for deceiving him though he had long forgiven her. “Brienne, I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

A sad smile plays across her lips. “I know.”

She pushes herself out of bed at that and he immediately misses the warmth of her body beside his.

He watches as she begins to gather her clothes from where they’re strewn across the small room, trying and failing to think of a way to make her stay longer. He would not dishonor her by asking her to give up the search and come back to King’s Landing with him. Never mind that there would be no place for her at court, or that as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard he would never be able to truly be with her. No, it was what Cersei would do, should she ever find out, that frightened him the most. Brienne would never be safe in King’s Landing so long as Cersei was there too.

He knows she wants to ask him to leave with her as much as he wants to ask her to come home with him, but neither of them will say it. They both understand the price of duty and cannot bear to compromise it in the other. He knows they have no choice but to part, and his chest aches with the finality of it. 

“Where will you go, once you find her?” he asks as she laces her tunic.

“Once I find her?” she replies. “Not ‘if’ I find her?”

Jaime smiles, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “Of course you’ll find her. If anyone can find her, it will be you.”

She beams at him, standing a little straighter as she finishes with the laces. “Mayhaps I’ll take her to Tarth. Or go to her half brother at the Wall.”

“Don’t get yourself killed, though.” He means it to come out jokingly, but he cannot help the dread from seeping into his words.

She turns to him, her blue eyes startlingly soft. “Nor you.”

Overcome with emotion, he reaches out to hook his stump around her waist and pulls her closer.

“Don’t marry Hunt,” he says, the thought suddenly coiling like an illness inside him. “Promise me, Brienne.”

She frowns down at him, curious. “I was never going to.” 

“I need you to know, I’m not going back for Cersei.”

“I would not ask anything of you.”

“There is nothing to ask—it is you I love.” He tilts his head up to her, heartache in his kiss.

He reluctantly follows her in dressing once they break apart. He’s pulling on his trousers while she straps Oathkeeper to her hip, her hand lingering for a moment after wrapping a length of plain cloth around the hilt. She looks up to catch his gaze.

“It’s still warm,” she explains, something like awe in her eyes. “It startles me every time…I don’t know what I’m meant to do with it.”

“I’m glad I gave it to you, no one in the Seven Kingdoms could wield it better,” he crosses the room and places his hand over her own, feeling the heat himself. “I don’t know what happened in that cave…but it was meant for you. It belongs with you, always.”

She kisses him then, one last time, her fingers trailing gently across his neck.

“I’ll go downstairs first,” she says quietly, bending to pick up her bags. The door clicks behind her with a tone of finality, this stolen time of theirs almost at an end. 

A short while later he follows to join the others to break his fast. Hunt looks positively mutinous when Jaime slides onto the bench beside Brienne. For his part, Podrick hides a grin behind a spoonful of porridge while glancing between Jaime and his lady knowingly. Brienne pointedly avoids looking at either of them as she scrapes her bowl clean with a hunk of stale bread, but cannot hide the pink tinging the high points of her cheeks. 

“We overheard some travelers talking, it seems there are Lannister patrols between here and Pennytree,” Brienne offers, her tone struggling too hard for normalcy. “Your journey should be safe.” 

Jaime nods, trying to ignore the way his chest tightens with each word from her.

“Ser Hyle, we should see to the horses,” Podrick says a little too loudly. The knight rolls his eyes but reluctantly follows the boy outside without a word.

He wants to steal every last moment he can, to squeeze a lifetime with her into mere minutes. Reaching for her hand under the table he entwines it with his, tipping his head down slightly to press a gentle kiss upon her cloaked shoulder. Her eyes flutter closed, sadness transforming her face.

When they finish eating and can delay no longer he follows her out to the horses. Podrick is strapping down the last of Jaime’s things, while Hunt seems to be dedicating far too much attention to the saddle of his own horse, determinedly not turning around at their approach.

Jaime feels like a man headed for the execution block. Everything in him wants to stay, to ride off into the Vale with Brienne, to follow her to the ends of the earth if need be. His duty has never felt more like a prison of his own making than it does in this moment. 

They arrive beside his horse and Brienne reaches out hesitantly, pulling his cloak tighter about him before resting her hands on his shoulders. “Be well, ser.”

He swallows thickly. Saying goodbye is not something he can bring himself to do. He looks at her watery smile, wondering if they will ever manage to find each other again. 

“Father, give her strength,” he murmurs into the space between them. 

Then there is nothing left to do but leave. He is about to mount the horse when he pauses, foot slipping back out of the stirrup. _Damn it all._

He spins around and draws her face to his, kissing her hard, not caring who sees. They break apart breathlessly, and he rests his forehead against hers for the briefest of moments before finally lifting himself onto his horse. 

He allows himself one more look at her before urging his mount forward. This is how he wishes to remember her, a force to be reckoned with—well-kissed, slightly annoyed with him, and shining in the morning light. 

—

The ride to Pennytree is, blessedly, short and uneventful. Jaime tries his best to cast thoughts of Brienne out of his mind for now, his emotions still too raw to contemplate. He will conjure her up later, when he has time to truly grieve what was lost. Instead, he focuses now on the motion of his horse, the road ahead of him, the chill in the air. He is pleased when he’s stopped by a scout not far outside of camp—it seems Addam Marband has not let things fall apart in his absence. 

“My lord, we thought you dead!” the lad exclaims, eyes widening when he recognizes his commander.

“Take me to Marband, we have much to discuss,” Jaime replies, slipping easily back into a tone of authority.

He draws his hood up as he walks through camp, not wanting to cause a stir until finding out from Addam what has transpired in his absence. He’s led into his old Commander’s tent to find his friend standing beside the desk reading from a stack of papers, when he looks up and recognizes Jaime. 

“Gods be good,” the man breathes, stepping forward to clap him on the shoulder. “Can it be you? I had nearly lost all hope.”

“The one and only.” Jaime can’t quite bring himself to smile in return. 

“What happened to you? Were you captured? I had sent patrols out looking for you when you didn’t return, but we never found a trace of you.”

“I’m sorry I left in such haste, we ended up much further afield than I had thought, then became stranded by a storm. I could not get word out.”

Addam rustles among the papers on the large desk, before producing a scroll with the king’s seal. “This came only days ago—there is no easy way to say this…the crown declared you dead and ordered us to call off the search.”

Jaime takes the parchment from his outstretched hand, head spinning as he reads it. “Not only am I dead, but I was first retired from the Kingsguard and my duties as Lord Commander. And you have been named Commander of the Lannister forces in my place.” He glances up at Addam.

His friend looks at him warily. “We will write to King’s Landing now that you’re back, have them undo it.”

“Yes,” Jaime says quietly, unsure of what he’s feeling, twenty years of his life ended with a mere scrap of paper. “I suppose.”

There is an odd spark of something like hope in him. He keeps reading. 

“And my uncle is dead. My sister has named herself Queen Regent in his place.” His head reels with the news—there will be no saving Tommen from her clutches, she will never let him near the boy, not now. She has won. 

“There was something else,” Addam says uncertainly, drawing another letter from his cloak and motioning towards a long wooden box on the table. “These came only yesterday, addressed to you. I have not opened either, hoping you would be back to do so yourself.”

Jaime breaks the royal seal and unfurls the parchment, surprised to see his son’s boyish handwriting.

_“Ser Uncle,_

_I hope this raven has found you alive and well. Mother said I must remove you from my Kingsguard and declare you dead for you have been missing too long, and your position must needs filling. I do not like to argue with mother and she has been so cross since her time with the High Septon, so I have done it. But I do not think you are dead. _

_I am sorry, I think you were a very good Lord Commander and a very good knight, and I think maybe you just got lost and will be back soon. Once I thought Ser Pounce to be gone but he was just exploring the Keep and he came back. So I have sent you this gift to thank you for your good and true service. I know you will wield if honorably and take it with you on many great adventures._

_Tommen Baratheon  
First of His Name  
King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men  
Lord of the Seven Kingdoms”_

A smile comes to his lips. The boy seems to understand more than he has given him credit for. Perhaps he will be able to evade his mother’s influence, yet. 

Inside the box rests a bundle of crimson cloth. Unraveling it, Jaime stares blankly at what lies underneath. Widow’s Wail glints in the warm light of the braziers, the gems inlaid in the hilt winking at him richly. He unsheathes the sword to expose the first few inches of Valyrian steel, rippled red and grey just like Oathkeeper. _Her blade’s twin._

A crow _quorks_ in the distance and an image of Brienne comes to him, blue flames dancing across Oathkeeper as she holds it out before her. 

He wonders…

Jaime brushes his hand across the steel. His duty has been stripped from him without ceremony and his sweet sister declared him dead without fanfare—her rush to be rid of him and the subsequent danger that could now befall him should he return evident in her haste. 

He is a man dead, at least on paper. Leaving the Kingsguard was not a choice he would have made for himself—just as she convinced him to join in the first place, this was yet another choice Cersei made for him. Or was it he who made that choice the day he followed Brienne back into the Riverlands? 

_So many vows, they make you swear and swear…_

Is he free of them, now?

He’d given up everything, once. Was there a new choice before him? _Embrace happiness and try to do good in the world, in whatever way you can,_ the Elder Brother had said.

He removes his own sword from where it rests against his hip, securing Widow’s Wail in its place. Addam lets out an impressed whistle. 

“I trust you to continue leading the forces—you have done well in my stead. Our work in the Riverlands is done, I think it’s past time the army return to the Westerlands.” 

“What do you mean? Surely now that you’re back…”

Jaime continues, ignoring him. “Help the smallfolk on your way if you can; this will not be an easy winter. Do not write to King’s Landing of my return. Swear that scout to silence…tell no one you saw me.”

He reaches into his bag, producing the thrice damned gold hand and tossing it to Addam.

“What’s this for?” His friend looks at the hand uncertainly.

“Proof.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Father, give her strength.” AFfC, Jaime I. 
> 
> “So many vows, they make you swear and swear…” ACoK, Catelyn VII
> 
> I like a good forehead touch, if you can’t tell from the oh, _several,_ I included in this chapter. But I simply couldn’t bring myself to cut any of them.


	12. Brienne VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So she will not despair, not yet. It had been a fleeting thing, their time together. She thinks that years from now it will have only felt like a flash of lightning, like the space between the blinking of an eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe we're at the end! This fic began 6 months ago with the idea for a scene in chapter 9, and somehow 11 other chapters grew around it. I'm so grateful to everyone for reading, and I hope you enjoy the conclusion!
> 
> As always, [the playlist is available on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1buPfBbDwFpuYzJUKcXmOG?si=ciXGeqwWRpO-qWN1-AuHWQ), and songs for this chapter are "Long Way" by Gordi and "Alexandria" by Levi Matthan.

_Love,_ she thinks. _I am loved._

The thought does little to warm her when it is so immediately followed by the memory of Jaime riding away. 

But with his love he gave her something she can hold on to. Something she can conjure up in moments of despair, or weakness, or uncertainty. The knowledge, good and true, that somewhere out there Jaime could whisper her name into the night and her soul will hear the echo, no matter how many leagues apart they may be.

So she will not despair, not yet. It had been a fleeting thing, their time together. She thinks that years from now it will have only felt like a flash of lightning, like the space between the blinking of an eye. Later she will let herself cry. She will shed tears for Jaime like some silly girl, when she can find time to sneak off on her own. She will let the sobs wrench out of her where no one can hear.

She could not be selfish. There are some things more important than ones own desires. Protecting the Stark girls, for her. For him, protecting the realm. War and death raged on around them and they were able to find a small amount of peace in one another. They had been luckier than most.

She tries to ignore the way her fingers itch to touch him, so she grips the reigns a little tighter and searches for a distraction. The ache in her chest will subside eventually, she thinks. But someday, in some future life, someone will ask her why her eyes are always so sad and she will press a hand to her breast and say to them _here, here is where Ser Jaime lives, here is where I remember him._

And she knows it will do no good to worry about him now, though it is hard not to wonder. Had he reached Pennytree? Is all well with his troops? With the king? She hopes his struggles will be few, and easy. He deserves that.

As the day wears on, Brienne falls back to let Ser Hyle lead the way. They’ve been following the River Road and crossed the Trident, giving the Inn at the Crossroads a wide berth though it adds hours to their ride. Her companions have remained deferential, and have not tried to pry. Still, Brienne wishes Podrick would stop sending sorrowful glances her way. 

She prefers Ser Hyle’s attitude, for once. He is clearly biting his tongue, but so far he has made no comment about what he surely must know has transpired, and for that she is thankful to him. She’s surprised he’s still coming with them to the Vale. Maybe he isn’t as focused on his own self-interest as she thought. Surely he cannot still be hoping to wed her, to claim Tarth for his own, not now. She casts her mind back to when she wanted to sneak off and leave Hyle behind, that night at the Crossroads, before everything went wrong. He nearly died because of his association with her. And while there is clearly no love lost between Ser Hyle and Jaime, he did choose to stay, and she is surprised to find she’s unbothered by his continued presence on her quest. 

She is trying to be more trusting. It does not come easy to her, not before and certainly not after all that happened with the Brotherhood, but still she is trying. She thinks of Nimble Dick, how she could not trust him when it mattered.

So she trusts in Sandor Clegane directing them to the Vale. He was hiding in plain sight on the Quiet Isle and could have remained hidden, but chose to reveal himself for a specific purpose. He did not speak once, no matter how many times she tried, so it did seem that he was serious about his penitence. If he was living amongst the brothers to atone for his sins, she doubts he would commit more by lying to them. 

Jaime and Podrick surmised that he must have known Sansa back in King’s Landing, though to what degree neither were certain. They know from the Elder Brother that he had been traveling with Arya—but which girl would they find beyond the Mountains of the Moon?

Despite her sorrow, Brienne has a renewed confidence in her quest—something she has not felt since leaving King’s Landing. She knows Jaime’s belief in her success is largely the cause, with the rest boiling down to their ever-dwindling options. And a small part, a silly little part, comes from the warmth she feels as Oathkeeper rests against her hip. _I have this sword for a reason. I_ will _fulfill that reason._

The forest begins to give way to steadily rising hills, the far off peaks of the mountains now visible along the horizon. The journey will take another sennight at least—gods willing the recent snow has subdued the mountain clans enough for safe passage.

As they make their way through the foothills Brienne feels the distance between her and Jaime growing ever more vast. It was a cruel gift they were given, such little time together. 

Hyle reaches the crest of the first hill and looks back the way they came. “Someone is following us,” he says decisively. 

Further down Brienne stiffens, old fears returning. “Last time I thought that, it turned out to be _you,_” she replies, forcing herself to sound nonchalant. 

Podrick arrives beside Hyle, turning to peer into the distance. “He’s right, ser. My lady, there is a man at the edge of the forest. He almost looks…” Podrick trails off, suddenly unsure of himself.

Brienne sighs, turning about to see for herself. 

There _is_ a man, far enough away that she can’t make out his features, but the way he holds himself…no. No, it wouldn’t be him. 

“We should keep moving,” she says.

“Three on one,” Hyle answers lazily. “And we are well-armed.”

“No need for fighting.” Brienne squints at the figure in the distance, distracted.

“Yet,” Hyle huffs.

“What should we do?” Podrick asks. 

The figure on the horse is moving quickly. The sun is beginning to dip in the sky and the terrain is growing more dangerous—they can’t possibly outrun him at this point, and there is nowhere to hide, besides. Yet something tells her this man is no foe.

Before they can decide anything the man spots them atop the hill. He raises an arm in greeting, and Brienne gasps aloud to see that he is missing a hand.

“Seven hells,” Hyle groans in resignation. “You two are going to be _insufferable._”

She hesitates for a moment, hope and uncertainty waring within her until she can stand it no longer. Pressing her heels she urges her horse back down the hill, racing to meet him halfway. 

Jaime leaps from his horse and strides forward to meet her, lowering his hood to reveal golden hair and a look of composure that does not match her own bewildered expression. He looks up at her, eyes alight, and places a hand on her horse when she slows to a stop.

“What—what has happened?” Her words come out halting, disbelieving. 

He looks almost mischievous. “I’ve made a choice.”

“Your duty…”

“The crown has stripped me of it, in my absence,” he replies conversationally. “In fact, they’ve declared me dead.”

“Surely if you returned, it could be undone.”

“I don’t want it to be undone.”

Something twists pleasantly in her chest. “You don’t?”

“What do _you_ want?” Such a simple question, really. 

“This is hardly about what I want.”

“Brienne.” He says her name like a prayer. “Ask me to come with you.”

She thinks absurdly of Ser Hyle and Podrick watching them from atop the hill.

“You hate the cold.”

He barks in laughter. “I do.”

She climbs off her horse, feeling no more steady for having her feet on the ground. He is so close to her, she cannot take her eyes off the green of his own. “You would resent me for it.”

“I wouldn’t,” he replies fervently. “Brienne, I wouldn’t. The crown has freed me, don’t you see?”

“You are certain?” 

“Always so stubborn.” He shakes his head, grinning warmly, nothing like the Jaime she first met when spiriting him away from Riverrun. He slides his hand up her neck, his thumb gentle where it brushes across her cheekbone. “Do not make me beg, it’s unbecoming.” 

She nods. “Come with me, then.” 

He sweeps her into a kiss almost before she can get the words out. A feeling of happiness like which she has never felt before courses through her—she feels as if she could burst. _Jaime._

A shout from above brings her back to her body.

“Are you two quite finished?” Hyle’s voice carries down to them. “We’re losing daylight.”

Jaime smiles against her mouth. “Oh, he’s going to _hate_ this.”

He kisses her once more before breaking apart fully, reluctantly climbing atop their horses.

“Well?” Jaime grins at her, expectantly. “Lead the way, my lady.” 

She looks to Ser Hyle and Podrick where they wait, to the mountains looming impossibly large beyond them. She looks again to Jaime, the soaring hope she feels amplified in the brilliance of his smile. She takes a steadying breath, reaching for the reassuring warmth of Oathkeeper at her hip. Looking to the horizon again a small smile pulls at her lips. An uncertain future awaits them all, but now, with Jaime at her side, she has grown to think that anything is possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for following along with this story. It has been an absolute pleasure and I’m so inspired to keep writing thanks to all of your kind comments! I also want to thank @perkymcbadsuit on tumblr, to whom I owe an enormous debt to for helping me workshop about 10 different versions of the final paragraph. 
> 
> I’ll forever be upset about what the show did to Jaime and Brienne, but I suppose I am grateful to that anger for leading me back to the books and back to writing fic. Right now, this is the longest thing I’ve ever written (and I know in the grand scheme of fic it’s not that long, but it even beats out my Master’s thesis so it’s long for me!)
> 
> I purposely left this somewhat open-ended. I do have some notes started for a potential part 2 that follows them into the Vale and subsequently The Long Night, but my thoughts are still very vague so I’m not promising anything right now.
> 
> However! I’ve begun writing a modern AU When Harry Met Sally-inspired Jaime/Brienne fic and I am super excited about it, so watch this space! (Though I should probably warn you that it’s already angstier than the source material, because that’s just how I roll apparently.) Feel free to follow me over on tumblr (@pearly--rose) since I’ll probably be posting snippets as I go.


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